Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2024

31 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING Using the Gemini North telescope near the summit of Maunakea in Hawai ‘ i, the team identified more than 100 of these missing-link gal- axies that show every stage of the transformation process. “Our results provide the most com- plete picture of the origin of this mysterious class of galaxy that was discovered nearly 25 years ago,” said NOIRLab astronomer Eric Peng, a co-author on the paper describing these results appearing in the jour- nal Nature . “Here we show that 106 small galaxies in the Virgo cluster have sizes between normal dwarf galaxies and UCDs, revealing a con- tinuum that fills the ‘size gap’ be- tween star clusters and galaxies.” The team compiled their sample by first looking at images from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Sur- vey, taken with the Canada-France- Hawai ‘ i Telescope. And though they were able to identify hundreds of candidate UCD progenitors, they were unable to confirm their true nature. The obstacle was that UCDs that are surrounded by envelopes of stars are indistinguishable from nor-