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New galaxies so small they had previously been mistaken for stars have been discovered by an international research project team led Dr Michael Drinkwater, a senior lecturer in physics at The University of Queensland.

Conducting galaxy research using large, ground-based pictures taken of the sky, astronomers initially thought ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) were nearby stars.

Dr Drinkwater, who led a team of eight astrophysicists from Australia, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, said the discovery confirmed a suspicion that had long troubled astronomers.

"There has always been the concern that galaxy surveys are biased against finding very diffuse galaxies. Because they are so faint, very compact galaxies look just like stars", he said.

Dr Drinkwater said the researchers found the UCDs while observing all objects in the direction of the Fornax Cluster - a system of 300 galaxies 60 million light years from Earth.

The UCDs were first discovered with the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. Amongst the 2500 objects that had previously been identified as stars, seven were actually found to be members of the Fornax cluster. At this distance they were too bright to be stars, but had to be a new class of extremely compact dwarf galaxy. The work has received $180,000 two-year Australian Research Council funding.

Dr Michael Drinkwater www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/drinkwatermj.html

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