Article by: Andacs Robert Eugen, on 01 July 2022, at 08:17 am Los Angeles time

An amateur astronomer has found a rather rare galaxy near the Andromeda galaxy that is bright enough to make discoveries around it difficult.

Giuseppe Donatiello discovered this fossil galaxy, which astronomers now call Pegasus V.

He did not discover it using his own telescope but found it in archive data from a US Department of Energy camera that did not hunt galaxies, but dark energy.

To confirm the discovery, astronomers aimed the Hawaiian Gemini North telescope at the region near Andromeda where Giuseppe claimed to have found it.

Astronomers have confirmed the discovery and further argued that the galaxy may be home to extremely old stars that could help us understand the past of our universe.

"This discovery marks the first time a galaxy this faint has been found around the Andromeda Galaxy using an astronomical survey that wasn't specifically designed for the task," said Michelle Collins, an astronomer at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom who leads the new research.

The 4-meter Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, which made the first observations of the region where the galaxy was later discovered, had the task of collecting data on dark energy and not finding galaxies, as Collins says.

Instead, Donatiello was right on the subject when he discovered the galaxy. He is participating in a search for the Andromeda dwarf galaxies led by David Martinez-Delgado of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain when he suddenly saw this fossil galaxy.

From now on, multiple researches will probably be done on the discovery because it can hide important information about the past of our Universe.

"This little fossil galaxy from the early universe may help us understand how galaxies form, and whether our understanding of dark matter is correct," Collins said.