Serendipitous discovery of an almost-dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster

@misc{le2026serendipitous,
  title = {{Serendipitous discovery of an almost-dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster}},
  author = {Minh Ngoc Le and Ignacio Trujillo and Sergio Guerra Arencibia and Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo and Junais and Mireia Montes and Johan H. Knapen and Željko Ivezić and Michael H. F. Wilkinson and Reynier Peletier and Miquel Serra-Ricart and Miguel R. Alarcon},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.19326},
  eprint = {2608.19326},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19326},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Serendipitous discovery of an almost-dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster
AU  - Minh Ngoc Le
AU  - Ignacio Trujillo
AU  - Sergio Guerra Arencibia
AU  - Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo
AU  - Junais
AU  - Mireia Montes
AU  - Johan H. Knapen
AU  - Željko Ivezić
AU  - Michael H. F. Wilkinson
AU  - Reynier Peletier
AU  - Miquel Serra-Ricart
AU  - Miguel R. Alarcon
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/05
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.19326
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19326
AB  - Analogues of extreme Local Group galaxies with very low surface brightnesses and large effective radii must exist elsewhere, still hidden due to current detection limits. We report the serendipitous discovery of the low-mass almost-dark galaxy TTT J1237327+143535 in the Virgo Cluster, observed using the Two-meter Twin Telescope at the Teide Observatory. TTT J1237327+143535 has a central surface brightness of 27.9 ± 0.2 mag arcsec^−2 in the g' band, an effective radius of 0.9 ± 0.1 kpc, and a total stellar mass of (2.2 ± 0.4) × 10^6 M_⊙. Its effective radius and absolute magnitude are similar to those of galaxies And XXI and And XXIII. The discovery of this extremely low-surface-brightness, extended, low-mass galaxy suggests the existence of a significant population of almost-dark galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. An in-depth analysis of the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey, as well as upcoming Rubin data releases and the 10-year Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time, is expected to reveal large samples of this extreme galaxy population, which will offer insights into galaxy formation in extreme conditions.
ER  -