Hubble Found a Galaxy With No Stars — And It Shouldn’t Exist

#NSN #NASA #Astronomy
Astronomers have discovered something extraordinary near the galaxy M94: Cloud-9, a mysterious object with hydrogen gas but almost no detectable stars.
Radio telescopes first revealed that something was there, but when scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to search for its stars, they found almost nothing. Even deeper observations failed to reveal a normal stellar population.
So what is holding Cloud-9 together?
The leading explanation is that it may sit inside a massive dark matter halo, making it a possible starless galaxy, failed galaxy, or Reionization-Limited H I Cloud (RELHIC) — an object that gathered gas but never successfully formed stars.
If Cloud-9 is what astronomers think it is, the discovery could be much bigger than one unusual object. There may be many more dark galaxies and starless dark matter halos hiding throughout the universe simply because they produce almost no light.
In this video, we explore the discovery of Cloud-9, what Hubble found, why the galaxy has no stars, how dark matter may be holding it together, and why this strange object could reveal an unseen population of galaxies.
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