It’s totally possible for a single star to block astronomers from seeing an entire galaxy. They recently got confirmation that such a scenario is feasible. One of the reasons is that the Universe is unfathomably huge.
The term HIPASS J1131-31, or Peekaboo, might not say anything to you. That’s because both are the monikers of the same galaxy that recently emerged from its ‘hiding place,’ according to a new study that’s accepted to appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
22 million light-years away
The newfound galaxy is located about 22 million light-years away from Earth. However, astronomers suspected the galaxy’s existence for many years, but it turned out that the space structure was ‘hiding’ behind one of the bright stars from our own Milky Way galaxy.
The discovery is also important because it indicates an example of galaxy formation processes that took place not long after the Big Bang – 13.8 billion years ago, to be more precise.
A tiny galaxy is giving researchers a direct window into the past! ????
Galaxy HIPASS J1131–31, emerged in the past 50-100 years from behind the fast-moving star that was obscuring astronomers' ability to detect it. ????
Learn more HERE>> https://t.co/xXTaW0Kmat
— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) December 7, 2022
Bärbel Koribalski, a professor and also an astronomer at the national science agency CSIRO of Australia, explained, as NASA’s website quotes:
At first we did not realize how special this little galaxy is,
Now with combined data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), and others, we know that the Peekaboo Galaxy is one of the most metal-poor galaxies ever detected.
HIPASS J1131-31 is also classified as a dwarf galaxy, and there’s no wonder why if we take a look at its measurements: it only reaches 1,200 light-years across.
Even though the Big Bang is the primarily accepted theory describing how our Universe began to exist in a more familiar state to us, there are still questions left unanswered. No scientist can provide irrefutable answers for what existed before the ‘bang’ itself or how the laws of physics began to exist, for instance.