NASA's Hubble telescope finds a dwarf galaxy as old as universe

Source: hubblesite.org

NASA's Hubble telescope has accidentally found a dwarf galaxy near our Milky way, which is almost as old as the universe. The living fossil galaxy NGC 6752 dubbed as Bedin 1 is elongated and faint and its estimated size is about 3,000 light years which is very small as compared to our Milky way which is almost 100,000 light years across. 

Earlier it was thought to be a star cluster which was a part of our own Milky Way. But, then the astronomers realised that it was infact a separate galaxy situated at a much more distance of almost 30 million light years. 

Credit: NASA/ESA 

Based on the property of its stars including their low-light luminosity, the astronomers were able to calculate its age to be around 10 to 13 billion years, which makes it one of the oldest galaxies ever discovered. It also happens to be one of the most isolated one too, and is named after Luigi Bedin - a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics who discovered it.


According to a paper published by Bedin and other researchers from Italy, UK, Germany and USA, the newly discovered galaxy consists mostly of red giants. It is situated at 28.38 million light years from earth and 2.12 milion light years from its neighbour, NGC 6744.