A galaxy named Segue 2 made up of 1,000 stars orbiting the Milky Way is the most lightweight ever discovered, according to reports.
Scientists measured the tiny galaxy using Hawaii's Keck Observatory say the finding adds support to theories about the formation of the universe. The Segue 2 is bound together by dark matter discovered in 2009 as part of the massive Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
The findings were published on Monday in The Astrophysical Journal.
"Models predict that the outskirts of our cosmic neighborhood should be teeming with tiny galaxies, but scientists have found far fewer satellite dwarf galaxies in the Local Group than they expected," according to Fox News.
The challenge that scientists noted is their inability to measure galaxies. Researchers right now may not have the proper tools to properly calculate the size of new cosmic bodies.
"Astronomers' inability to measure these cosmic bodies has been a major puzzle, suggesting that perhaps our theoretical understanding of structure formation in the universe was flawed in a serious way," said study researcher James Bullock, a University of California, Irvine cosmologist in a press statement. "Finding a galaxy as tiny as Segue 2 is like discovering an elephant smaller than a mouse."
According to reports, the newly discovered galaxy has a luminosity 900 times that of our sun while The Milky Way is 20 billion times brighter.
"What sets Segue 2 apart from a star cluster is the dark matter halo that acts as the galaxy's glue," another study researcher, Evan Kirby, explained in the press release.
By calculating the upper weight range of 25 of the major stars in the dwarf galaxy, Kirby and colleagues found that Segue 2 is 10 times less dense than previously estimated.
Segue 2's presence could be a "tip-of-the-iceberg observation, with perhaps thousands more very low-mass systems orbiting just beyond our ability to detect them," Bullock said.
