The research aimed to study the star-forming gas in a single radio galaxy but didn’t find any. Dr Glowacki instead discovered 49 other galaxies while inspecting the data.
Dr Glowacki praised the capabilities of MeerKAT for finding the star-forming gas in galaxies.
The observations, which lasted less than three hours and were facilitated by IDIA (Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy), made this discovery possible.
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“I did not expect to find almost 50 new galaxies in such a short time,” Dr Glowacki said. “By implementing different techniques for finding galaxies, which are used for other MeerKAT surveys, we were able to detect all of these galaxies and reveal their gas content.”
The new galaxies have been informally nicknamed the 49ers, a reference to the 1849 California gold rush miners. Dr Glowacki views the 49 new galaxies as valuable as gold nuggets in the night sky.
Many galaxies are near each other, forming galaxy groups, with several identified in one observation.
Three galaxies are directly connected by their gas.
“These three are particularly interesting, as by studying the galaxies at other wavelengths of light, we discovered the central galaxy is forming many stars. It is likely stealing the gas from its companion galaxies to fuel its star formation, which may lead the other two to become inactive,” Dr Glowacki said.
“This discovery highlights the raw power of the MeerKAT telescope as an imaging instrument. The methods we developed and implemented to study the 49ers will be useful for MeerKAT large science surveys and smaller observing campaigns such as ours,” wrote University of the Western Cape professor Ed Elson in a paper he co-authored.
Dr Glowacki has recently discovered more gas-rich galaxies with the help of Jasmine White, an ICRAR summer student, who worked with him and analysed short observations made by MeerKAT.
“We hope to continue our studies and share even more discoveries of new gas-rich galaxies with the wider community soon,” Dr Glowacki said.
The research was published overnight in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
