Meet the cosmic ghost that gives off no light. What you see in the image is the mysterious celestial object J0613+52—a galaxy unlike any we've ever seen. It's made up of cold hydrogen and dark matter and contains no visible stars whatsoever. But if there are no stars, how did scientists discover it?
A cosmic accident
In January 2024, a team of astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory in the United States was operating the radio telescope when one of the researchers pointed it at the wrong coordinates. They weren’t expecting to see anything—but what they found defied all expectations.
Instead of emptiness, the telescope picked up a strong radio signal from deep in the sky. The source was a colossal cloud of neutral hydrogen, with a mass of about a trillion suns—the size of an entire galaxy, but completely dark.
How did scientists know it was a galaxy?
Neutral hydrogen gives off a distinctive radio signal at a wavelength of 21 centimeters. This emission cuts through cosmic dust and doesn’t require starlight to detect. That’s how scientists were able to “see” the invisible.
Why doesn’t this galaxy contain any stars?
Astronomers are still baffled. One theory suggests the gas is too spread out and too diffuse to collapse into stars. What’s more, this object is incredibly isolated: there isn’t another galaxy within 330 million light-years. For comparison, the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda is just 2.5 million light-years. Usually, galaxy collisions help stir up gas and trigger star formation, but J0613+52 never got that chance.
Could this be a 'primordial galaxy' from the dawn of the universe?
Some astronomers believe this galaxy might be a leftover from the early universe—a body of gas that has stayed much the same for billions of years, never evolving.
A discovery born from a mistake
A simple coordinate error led scientists to take a shot in the dark—and they hit upon one of the most mysterious galaxies ever found, invisible in ordinary light. Imagine how many hidden galaxies like J0613+52 might be scattered across the darkness of the cosmos, completely unknown to us.
Space isn’t just empty void. It’s a collection of unexplored worlds, waiting to be uncovered. And who knows what we’ll find next?
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