Peekaboo! A Tiny, Hidden Galaxy Provides a Peek into the Past

Summary
Tucked away in a local pocket of dark matter, a late-blooming dwarf galaxy looks like it belongs in the early universe.
Like someone living apart from modern conveniences, a dwarf galaxy in the local universe looks like it belongs in another time—the early eras of galaxy evolution itself. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has helped confirm an example of what astronomers call an "extremely metal-poor" galaxy, which has very few of the chemical elements or "metals" that stars produce and enrich their galaxies with over time. Most intriguingly, its stars indicate that it is also one of the youngest galaxies ever detected in the local universe.
Despite the galaxy being nearly hidden behind the glare of a foreground star—leading to its nickname, Peekaboo—Hubble was able to pick out individual stars for analysis. The discovery provides the tantalizing opportunity to study a relic of the past in fine detail, like shaking hands with an ancient ancestor.
Full Article
Peeking out from behind the glare of a bright foreground star, astronomers have uncovered the most extraordinary example yet of a nearby galaxy with characteristics that are more like galaxies in the distant, early universe. Only 1,200 light-years across, the tiny galaxy HIPASS J1131–31 has been nicknamed "Peekaboo" because of its emergence in the past 50-100 years from behind the fast-moving star that was obscuring astronomers' ability to detect it. The discovery is a combined effort of telescopes on the ground and in space, including confirmation by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Together ...Visit NASA Science to view the full news release including article text and associated Hubble imagery, graphics, scientific visualizations, videos, captions, text descriptions, and other information.
News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-26555. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.
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