8 more galactic neighbours found hovering near our Milky Way

A survey has found more celestial neighbours hovering near our Milky Way, suggesting that our sky is more crowded than we thought

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey, using one of the world's most powerful digital cameras, have discovered eight more faint celestial objects. Signs indicate that they, like the objects found by the same team earlier this year, are likely dwarf satellite galaxies, the smallest and closest known form of galaxies.

Satellite galaxies are small celestial objects that orbit larger galaxies, such as our own Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies can be found with fewer than 1,000 stars, in contrast to the Milky Way, an average-size galaxy containing billions of stars.

Scientists have predicted that larger galaxies are built from smaller galaxies, which are thought to be especially rich in dark matter, the substance that makes up about 25 percent of the total matter and energy in the universe. Dwarf satellite galaxies, therefore, are considered key to understanding dark matter and the process by which larger galaxies form.

Scientists can only see the faintest dwarf galaxies when they are nearby, and had previously only found a few of them. If these new discoveries are representative of the entire sky, there could be many more galaxies hiding in our cosmic neighborhood.

Just this year, more than 20 of these dwarf satellite galaxy candidates have been spotted, with 17 of those found in Dark Energy Survey data, said Alex Drlica-Wagner of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, one of the leaders of the DES analysis.

He added that they've nearly doubled the number of these objects they knew about in just one year, which is remarkable.

The study appears in Astrophysical Journal.