Features
Officially discovered in 1994, by Rodrigo Ibata, Mike Irwin, and Gerry Gilmore, Sag DEG was immediately recognized as being the nearest known neighbor to our Milky Way at the time. (Since 2003, the newly discovered Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is considered the actual nearest neighbor). Although it is one of the closest companion galaxies to the Milky Way, the main parent cluster is on the opposite side of the galactic core from Earth, and consequently is very faint, although it covers a large area of the sky. Sag DEG appears to be an older galaxy, with little interstellar dust and composed largely of Population II stars, older and metal-poor, as compared to the Milky Way. No neutral hydrogen gas related to Sag DEG was found by Burton & Lockman in 1999.
Further discoveries by astrophysics teams from both the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, drawing upon the 2MASS Two-Micron All Sky Infrared Survey data, revealed the entire loop-shaped structure. In 2003 with the aid of infrared telescopes and super computers, Steven Majewski, Michael Skrutskie, and Martin Weinberg were able to help create a new star map, picking out the full Sagittarius Dwarf presence, position, and looping shape from the mass of background stars and finding this smaller galaxy to be at a near right angle to the plane of the Milky Way.
Read more about this topic: Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy
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