Using AI Technology, Astronomers Find Galaxies with the Lowest Oxygen
Astronomers have found galaxies with the lowest oxygen levels ever detected. This galaxy is known as HSC J1631 + 4426 and is located 450 million light-years from Earth.
Oxygen is a by-product of star processes, the more oxygen there is, meaning the older the galaxy. Thanks to machine learning software, researchers have now discovered a galaxy that has 1.6 percent oxygen present in the Sun.
Reporting from IFLScience , this finding was reported in The Astrophysical Journal. This is a record-breaking oxygen level showing the galaxy has just formed a star.
The discovery of such galaxies was only discovered by extraordinary software that could analyze the vast amounts of data collected by the Subaru Telescope. Out of more than 40 million galaxies observed by Subaru, the software chose 27 interesting candidates.
The reason the galaxy is interesting, is because it represents objects that began to form later, in the history of the universe that can provide new insights about galaxy formation. Apart from that, maybe this is one of the last galaxies to be born, another property that distinguishes HSC J1631 + 4426t from galaxies like our Milky Way is its extraordinary light.
"What is surprising is that the mass of the galaxy star HSC J1631 + 4426 is very small, 0.8 million solar masses. The mass of this star is only about 1 / 100,000 of our Milky Way galaxy, and is comparable to the mass of star clusters in our Milky Way," said Professor Masami Ouchi from the Japanese National Astronomy Observatory and Tokyo University.
Galaxies like this are very rare findings. The team hopes this will provide more new insights about galaxy evolution.