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First images of the cosmic web reveal a myriad of unsuspected dwarf galaxies

by Roland Bacon - published on , updated on

First images of the cosmic web reveal a myriad of unsuspected dwarf galaxies

Although the filaments of gas in which galaxies are born have long been predicted by cosmological models, we have so far had no real images of such objects. Now for the first time, several filaments of the ‘cosmic web’ have been directly observed using the MUSE instrument installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. These observations of the early Universe, 1 to 2 billion years after the Big Bang, point to the existence of a multitude of hitherto unsuspected dwarf galaxies. Carried out by an international collaboration led by the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, the study is published on 18 March 2021 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

View online : CNRS Press Release