Sculptor Galaxies

By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from the environmental influence of larger objects. The galaxies, located in the direction of NGC 300, were found to contain only very old stars, supporting the theory that events in the early Universe cut star formation short in the smallest galaxies.

These images were taken for the DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS), one of three public surveys that jointly imaged 14,000 square degrees of sky to provide targets for the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey. DECals was conducted using the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.