Astronomers discover 49 new galaxies in less than three hours

49 new gas-rich galaxies have been found by an international team of astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society publishes their research. 

The research's primary goal was to examine the star-forming gas in a single radio galaxy. It was headed by Dr. Marcin Glowacki of the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia. Upon examining the data, Dr. Glowacki found more galaxies even though the team's research of the galaxy produced no star-forming gas. 

49 galaxies' worth of gas had been found in total. This, according to Dr. Glowacki, is a prime illustration of how wonderful a tool like MeerKAT is for locating the star-forming gas in galaxies. 

The findings, which lasted less than three hours and were facilitated by IDIA (Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy), made this discovery possible. 

"I did not expect to find almost 50 new galaxies in such a short time," he said. "By implementing different techniques for finding galaxies, which are used for other MeerKAT surveys, we were able to detect all of these galaxies and reveal their gas content." 

The colloquial term "49ers" for the new galaxies alludes to the 1849 California gold rush laborers. According to Dr. Glowacki, the 49 new galaxies in our night sky are as precious as gold nuggets. Several galaxies can be identified in a single observation because they are close to one another and form galaxy groupings. 

The gas directly connects three galaxies. 

"These three are particularly interesting," Dr. Glowacki stated, "because we found the central galaxy is forming many stars by studying the galaxies at different wavelengths of light." The other two galaxies may go dormant as a result of it presumably stealing their gas to fuel its star production." 

Professor Ed Elson, from the University of the Western Cape and a co-author of the paper, said, "This discovery highlights the raw power of the MeerKAT telescope as an imaging instrument. The methods we developed and implemented to study the 49ers will be useful for MeerKAT large science surveys and smaller observing campaigns such as ours." 

Dr. Glowacki has recently discovered more gas-rich galaxies with the help of Jasmine White, an ICRAR summer student, who worked with him and analyzed short observations made by MeerKAT. 

"We hope to continue our studies and share even more discoveries of new gas-rich galaxies with the wider community soon," Dr. Glowacki said.