Ooops, wrong hobbits.

New 'Hobbit' Galaxies Discovered Around Milky Way

By Ker Than, Staff Writer for Space.com

January 15, 2007

Source Link

Researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) announced the discovery of eight new dwarf galaxies, seven of them satellites orbiting the Milky Way. They resemble systems cannibalized by the Milky Way billions of years ago and help close the gap between the observed number of dwarf satellites and theoretical predictions. Credit: Vasily Belokurov, SDSS-II, Astronomy magazine, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

A recent sky survey has turned up eight new members in our Local Group of galaxies, including a new class of ultra-faint "hobbit" galaxies and what might be the smallest galaxy ever discovered.

The Local Group is a collection of about 40 galaxies, of which the Milky Way and Andromeda are the dominant members. The rest of the galaxies are mostly small satellites known as