Using the Subaru Telescope atop Maunakea, researchers have identified 11 dwarf galaxies and two star-containing halos in the outer region of a large spiral galaxy 25 million light-years away from Earth. The findings provide new insight into how these ‘tidal stellar streams’ form around galaxies.

This research is published in the Astrophysical Journal (Tanaka et al. 2017, “Resolved Stellar Streams around NGC 4631 from a Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey”, The Astrophysical Journal, 842, 127).

Links

• Uncovering the origins of galaxies' halos (Subaru Telescope)
• Uncovering the origins of galaxies' halos (Tohoku University)