Dark matter is believed to be a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about 27% of its total mass-energy density. In fact, conceiving of a universe without dark matter would seem nearly impossible and yet the Hubble Telescope has spotted yet another such galaxy: (UDG) NGC1052-DF2 (DF2).
An international team of researchers led by Zili Shen and Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and Shany Danieli, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, measured the distance of DF2 and found it to be 22.1 +/-1.2 megaparsecs proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the galaxy lacks dark matter.
The new study improves on results published in 2019, based on 12 Hubble orbits and TRGB analysis, that confirmed that another neighboring galaxy UDG NGC1052-DF4 (DF4) also lacked dark matter.
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