Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2024

33 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING Furthermore, nearly all the candi- dates were near to massive galaxies, suggesting that their local environ- ment plays an important role in their formation. “Once we analyzed the Gemini ob- servations and eliminated all the background contamination, we could see that these transition galaxies existed almost exclusively near the largest galaxies. We imme- diately knew that environmental transformation had to be impor- tant,” said Kaixiang Wang, a PhD student at Peking University and lead author of the paper. Besides identifying the environment UCDs live in, these results also lend valuable insight into how many of these objects there are and what the full sequence of their evolution- ary change looks like. “It’s exciting that we can finally see this transfor- mation in action,” said Peng. “It tells us that many of these UCDs are visible fossil remnants of ancient A continuum of galaxies captured at different stages of the trans- formation process from a dwarf galaxy to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy (UCD). These objects are lo- cated near the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87, the dominant member of the neighboring Virgo Cluster. [NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NASA/R. Gendler/ K. Wang/M. Zamani] dwarf galaxies in galaxy clusters, and our results suggest that there are likely many more low-mass rem- nants to be found,” he added. “This study illustrates how large sur- veys can improve our understanding of the biggest questions in astron- omy, like galaxy evolution,” says Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab. “NSF’s NOIRLab is a world leader in supporting astro- nomical surveys and — importantly — providing community and public access to the data and the amazing resulting discoveries.” !