The Draco Dwarf Galaxy

About the Object

The Draco Dwarf galaxy is one of the classical dwarf galaxies in the Local Group discovered in 1954 on photographic plates of the POSS survey, i.e. it was discovered before the number of known dwarf galaxies dramatically increased thanks to modern CCD based surveys. It is a dwarf spheroidal orbiting the Milky Way, consisting predominantly of old stars (>10Gyr) but with a small star formation episode some 2 billion years ago. Metal content is very low, only 1/50 r so of the Sun. Intrinsically it is very faint, the total luminosity only being 2e5 L_sun, but the internal velocity dispersion is considerable making Draco Dwarf one of the most dark matter dominated galaxies known.

owing to its very faint nature, Draco Dwarf is one of the spectacularly unspectacular objects in the sky, making it an interesting target in particular for those people who like obscure objects. Indeed it is just a mild over density of very faint stars behind the screen of foreground stars. Quite difficult to process so it stands out a bit against the neighboring purely Milky Way dominated fields.

Observation Notes

Data were taken on 2025 June 25, and July 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, and 26 (summer nights are short at 52N)

Technical Details

View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.