The qualities and behavior of dark matter, the invisible 'glue' of the universe, continue to be shrouded in mystery. Though galaxies are mostly made of dark matter, understanding how it is distributed within a galaxy offers clues to what this substance is, and how it's relevant to a galaxy's evolution.
The qualities and behavior of dark matter , the invisible 'glue' of the universe, continue to be shrouded in mystery. Though galaxies are mostly made of dark matter , understanding how it is distributed within a galaxy offers clues to what this substance is, and how it's relevant to a galaxy's evolution.
A team of astronomers has turned toward NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to try and clarify this debate by measuring the dynamic motions of stars within the Draco dwarf galaxy, a system located roughly 250,000 light-years from Earth. Using observations that spanned 18 years, they succeeded in building the most accurate three-dimensional understanding of stars' movements within the diminutive galaxy.
"Improvements in data and improvements in modeling usually go hand in hand," explained Roeland van der Marel of STScI, a co-author of the paper who initiated the study more than 10 years ago."If you don't have very sophisticated data or only one-dimensional data, then relatively straightforward models can often fit. The more dimensions and complexity of data you gather, the more complex your models need to be to truly capture all the subtleties of the data.
With three dimensions of data, the team reduced the amount of assumptions applied in previous studies and considered characteristics specific to the galaxy -- such as its rotation, and distribution of its stars and dark matter -- in their own modeling efforts.The methodologies and models developed for the Draco dwarf galaxy can be applied to other galaxies in the future. The team is already analyzing Hubble observations of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy and the Ursa Minor dwarf galaxy.
Galaxies Astronomy Dark Matter NASA Space Telescopes Space Exploration Stars
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