NASA's Hubble finds ‘Cloud-9’, scientists call it ‘window into dark universe’: What's so special about it?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Hubble telescope discovered a new astronomical object in the universe. It's a cloud — starless, gas-rich and dominated by dark matter. It's nicknamed ‘Cloud-9.’

Cloud-9 is located 14 million light-years from Earth. The results of this new discovery were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"This is a tale of a failed galaxy," said Alejandro Benitez-Llambay of the Milano-Bicocca University in Milan, Italy.

Scientists believe it may help in further understanding galaxy formation, the early universe, and the nature of dark matter itself.

NASA explained that before the Hubble observations, scientists could argue that Cloud-9 is a faint dwarf galaxy whose stars could not be seen with ground-based telescopes due to the lack of sensitivity.

However, Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys showed that, in reality, the “failed galaxy” contains no stars.

NASA's official press release on January 5 stated that Cloud-9 "is a neutral hydrogen cloud from the early days of the Universe, which never gathered enough gas to form stars – a failed galaxy."

Llambay explained that “in science, we usually learn more from the failures than from the successes."

"In this case, seeing no stars is what proves the theory right. It tells us that we have found in the local universe a primordial building block of a galaxy that hasn't formed,” the program’s principal investigator said.

Scientists have been searching for years for such an object, it added.

Researchers say that Cloud-9's discovery provides a “window into the dark Universe”, which is difficult to study through traditional observations.

Cloud-9 suggests the existence of many other “small, dark matter-dominated structures in the universe — other failed galaxies,” NASA said.

Andrew Fox is part of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy/Space Telescope Science Institute (AURA/STScI) for the European Space Agency (ESA).

He said, "This cloud is a window into the dark universe...We know from theory that most of the mass in the universe is expected to be dark matter, but it’s difficult to detect this dark material because it doesn’t emit light. Cloud-9 gives us a rare look at a dark-matter-dominated cloud.”

NASA releases image of ‘Cloud-9’

An image released by the NASA showed the location of Cloud-9. The diffuse magenta seen in the image is radio data from the ground-based Very Large Array (VLA), showing the presence of the cloud.

The dashed circle marks the peak of radio emission, which is where researchers focused their search for stars.

Follow-up observations by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys found no stars within the cloud.

The few objects that appear within its boundaries are background galaxies.