’Homeless’ Galaxies Ejected From Clusters

Like stars that can be ejected from galaxies, resigned to an eternity floating through the darkness of intergalactic space, astronomers have discovered entire galaxies — 11 in total — that underwent some unpleasant gravitational turbulence and flung from their home clusters, marooned in intercluster space.

“These galaxies are facing a lonely future, exiled from the galaxy clusters they used to live in,” said Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Moscow State University.

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I wonder the the Milky Way galaxy will have any of its smaller neighboring galaxies flung away when the Andromeda galaxy merges with the Milky Way galaxy?

or will have all the smaller neighboring galaxies have merged by then?

From link:
“from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the GALEX satellite for compact elliptical galaxies. These tiny galaxies are rare, but the researchers were able to uncover 200 previously unknown compact ellipticals, 11 of which were found to be alone and separated from any galactic cluster. And they are moving really, really fast.”

Nice work.

CrazyNeutrino said:

I wonder the the Milky Way galaxy will have any of its smaller neighboring galaxies flung away when the Andromeda galaxy merges with the Milky Way galaxy? or will have all the smaller neighboring galaxies have merged by then?

That would be tough to prove, because although we can measure whether a galaxy is approaching or receding, we can’t easily measure if it is heading right or left. So I may as well take a guess. The Magellanic Clouds will have merged with the Milky Way, they’re already being ripped apart to form the Magellanic Streams. Ditto Sagittarius Dwarf. Other small galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda, would almost certainly be drawn into the mix. On the other hand, the Triangulum galaxy and some other further galaxies would (NGC 3190, IC 10 etc.) almost certainly survive intact. The galaxies M32, M110, NGC 147 and NGC 185 orbit Andromeda so would almost certainly end up in the mix.