Local Dwarfs
There are many dwarf galaxies in the Local Group: these small galaxies frequently orbit around larger galaxies, such as the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy. A 2007 paper has suggested that many dwarf galaxies were created by tidal forces during the early evolution of the Milky Way and Andromeda. Tidal dwarf galaxies are produced when galaxies collide and their gravitational masses interact. Streams of galactic material are pulled out away from the parent galaxies and the halos of dark matter that surround them.
The Milky Way has more than 20 known dwarf galaxies orbiting it, and recent observations have also led astronomers to believe the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way, Omega Centauri, is in fact the core of a dwarf galaxy with a black hole in its center, which was at some time absorbed by the Milky Way.
Read more about this topic: Dwarf Galaxy
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or dwarfs:
“Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk
Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday
The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women,
Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives
Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden
Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons
Back now, all of them, to their local lives....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We don’t want bores in the theatre. We don’t want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different.”
—Dame Sybil Thorndike (1882–1976)