“I didn’t expect to find almost 50 new galaxies in such a short time!”
Gas-rich galaxies were discovered by a team of MeerKAT radio telescopes located in South Africa. They were called the 49ers. This is a reference to the nickname given to the thousands of gold miners who flocked to California during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1849. Now this nickname is worn by the American football team San Francisco 49ers (San Francisco 49ers).
A team of astronomers was trying to study star-forming gas in one radio galaxy. Instead, they discovered 49 new galaxies during observations that lasted about 180 minutes.
Research leader Marcin Glowacki of the Curtin University branch of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia views 49 new galaxies as «gold nuggets» for astronomers. In his opinion, their discovery may have been as fortuitous as the discovery of the first grains of gold at the Sutter's sawmill in Coloma, which marked the beginning of the California Gold Rush in 1848.
Glowacki said:
I didn't expect to find almost 50 new galaxies in such a short time. By using various galaxy-hunting techniques used in other MeerKAT studies, we were able to detect all of these galaxies and identify the gas they contained.
Many of the 49 newly discovered galaxies are located in close proximity to each other and form groups of galaxies.