A team of astronomers found a galaxy that is almost entirely made up of dark matter. This galaxy is called Dragonfly 44 and it’s located in the Coma constellation. One piece of evidence that led to this discovery is the stars velocity. The faster the stars move the more mass its parent galaxy has. However, don’t we see fast moving stars in other galaxies? We actually do but what makes this one so exciting is the fact the galaxy itself is very dim as oppose to fast moving stars like in our bright Milky Way or Andromeda galaxy. The mass of Dragonfly 44 is estimated to be 1 trillion times the mass of our sun. In comparison that is the mass of our very own Milky Way! However, the weird part is 1/100th of that is actual matter and the 99% of it is in the form of dark matter. Finding these dark galaxies is not something new in the astronomy community as many ultra-faint dwarf galaxies have been discovered before. Nevertheless, why this is particularly unique is those dwarf galaxies are 10,000 times less massive than Dragonfly 44. Currently, there is a race in the scientific community to understand dark matter and Dragonfly 44 may be the ticket to uncovering this cosmic mystery. Credit: Pieter van Dokkum, Roberto Abraham, Gemini, Sloan Digital Sky Survey #astronomy #dragonfly44 #darkmatter #galaxies #galaxy #NASA #space
