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Satellites around Gallactic Analogs Survey

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 1:13 am
by Eric Romano
Is our milky way galaxy unique or normal?

SAGA will be conducting studies on 100 galaxies to find out if we are as unique or just another typical spiral galaxy.
Till now, SAGA has studied eight Milky Way-like galaxy systems in the past five years, and has revealed that our satellites are much calmer — as in, less luminous and making fewer stars — than those of our “siblings.”
Marla Geha, the first author of the paper and a researcher at Yale University, added, “Hundreds of astronomy studies come out every year about dark matter, cosmology, star formation, and galaxy formation, using the Milky Way as a guide. But it’s possible that the Milky Way is an outlier.”

Over the next two years, the survey plans to add 25 more siblings to their dataset, which should improve astronomers’ ability to discern trends about the Milky Way and similar galaxy systems.