![\"Creative](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SEI_317711035-5092.jpg\")
\n\t\tJulian Shapiro has received the Davidson Prize for being an award-winning astronomer (Picture: Shannon IKelli Pictures)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tJulian Shapiro has received the Davidson Prize for being an award-winning astronomer (Picture: Shannon IKelli Pictures)<\/p>\n
What did you get up to in school<\/a>? Maybe you listened to The Killers, dared to run in the corridor or constantly debated skiving maths. <\/p>\n Julian Shapiro, however, was busy discovering three galaxies<\/a>, all of which are a new type of galaxy altogether.<\/p>\n \u2018It was very exciting,\u2019 Julian tells Metro, \u2018though my excitement was drawn out over a long time as it took months to estimate their distances.\u2019<\/p>\n Julian, now an undergraduate astrophysics student at the University of California<\/a>, Berkeley<\/a>, wrote about his findings in a paper this month.<\/p>\n The trio of cosmic neighbourhoods, published in the Astrophysical Journal<\/a>, are even named after him: Shapiro Dwarf Galaxies I, II, and III.<\/p>\n \t\t They\u2019re what scientists call \u2018backsplash galaxies\u2019, cosmic drifters that have had all their star-forming gases sucked up by larger galaxies.<\/p>\n The Shapiro Dwarf Galaxies are about 25million light-years away from Earth, or 1.400000e+14 miles, or one followed by 14 zeroes. <\/p>\n \u2018The backsplash candidates I discovered are dwarf galaxies, which are flung around much more easily, and each contains only a few hundred thousand stars compared to a few hundred billion in our galaxy,\u2019 Julian says.<\/p>\n Three tiny galaxies could solve big puzzles, says astronomer <\/p>\n \t\t Backsplash galaxies have long been predicted but never definitively observed in the wild. <\/p>\n So between classes, Julian used archival telescope data to predict likely locations in the nearby universe.<\/p>\n The best contenders are dwarf galaxies, clusters of just a few hundred thousand stars. Tiny by galactic standards.<\/p>\n Sometimes they\u2019re going starless as the larger galaxies they lurk near are stealing the gas they need to make new celestial bodies. Others are lone wolves, twinkling away with activity. <\/p>\n The three Julian spotted seem to be somewhere in between. <\/p>\n They\u2019re gasless loners but are far away from their alleged cosmic gas thief, M101, a pinwheel-shaped galaxy made of one trillion stars.<\/p>\n \t\t Julian says M101 robbed the Shapiro Dwarf Galaxies of their star-making gas and chucked them aside, making them among the first resolved \u2018backsplash galaxy\u2019 candidates.<\/p>\n \u2018Their potential ejection history can help explain unexpected populations of dwarf galaxies that are isolated and not forming new stars,\u2019 Julian adds.<\/p>\n If M101 is hurling around backsplash galaxies, it suggests that the spiral galaxy we call home, the Milky Way, could be doing the same. <\/p>\n The findings, which will require follow-up studies, have long been predicted by the standard model of cosmology, called Lambda-CDM.<\/p>\n According to the model, after the Big Bang, gravity crammed cosmic gas into stars and black holes, then dragged them together into galaxies.<\/p>\n \t\t For Julian, he\u2019s come a long way since he was a high school student looking forward to his afternoon physics classes. <\/p>\n \u2018I have had an interest in astronomy since I was very young,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n \u2018But it largely emerged from the aesthetic beauty of our universe and images from the Hubble Telescope.\u2019<\/p>\n Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more stories like this, check our news page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Arrow Arrow Arrow![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SEI_317718229-37f1.jpg\")
\n\t\tThe backsplash galactic trio and M101, the Pinwheel galaxy (Picture: Julian Shapiro\/SDSS Hyper Suprime-Cam Legacy Archive\/NAOJ and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope\/Coelum)<\/p>\n![\"Creative](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SEI_317718073-777f.jpg\")
\n\t\tJulian found three possible backsplash galaxies (Picture: Shannon Kelli\/Shannon IKelli Pictures)<\/p>\n![\"Researchers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SEI_311644229-40ae-e1792674980374.jpg\")
\n\t\tM101 is often called the Pinwheel galaxy (Picture: NASA\/CXC\/U Alab\/Muhibullah et al)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SEI_317718074-2647.jpg\")
\n\t\tJulian presented his findings at the American Astronomical Society conference, which will require follow-up studies to confirm (Picture: Julian Shapiro)<\/p>\n
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