Galaxy Hunter! A High Schooler Just Got Three Galaxies Named After Him
Quick Summary
A teenager doing astronomy research in high school has just had his biggest discovery officially published in a major science journal. Julian Shapiro found three never-before-seen galaxies — tiny ones that broke the rules of how galaxies are supposed to work. Now those galaxies are named Shapiro I, Shapiro II, and Shapiro III.
What Happened?
Julian Shapiro was still a high school student when he began digging through huge public databases of telescope images. He was searching for a special type of small galaxy called a dwarf galaxy.
Dwarf galaxies are tiny compared to giants like our Milky Way. They are like small country villages compared to a massive city. Most dwarf galaxies that live far away from other galaxies are still busy making new stars. That is because they have plenty of gas — the raw material stars need to form.
But the three galaxies Julian found were different. They are far from any big neighbor galaxy, yet they have stopped making stars completely. Scientists call galaxies like this “quenched” — as if someone turned off their star-making engine.
How did that happen? Julian’s best explanation is something called the “backsplash” theory. He thinks these galaxies may have once flown close to a large galaxy long ago. The big galaxy’s pressure stripped away their gas. Then the small galaxies got flung back outward — like a ball bouncing off a wall — and ended up floating far away, empty and star-free.
Julian used public images from several large telescope archives to build his discovery from home, without needing his own telescope. His paper was published in The Astrophysical Journal. He is now a first-year student at UC Berkeley studying astrophysics.
Why Does It Matter?
Julian’s discovery is exciting for two big reasons.
First, his three galaxies are some of the first real-life examples that support the backsplash theory. Finding proof for a theory that was only ever modeled on a computer is a huge deal in science.
Second, Julian was just a high school student when he did this research. It shows that young people — even kids who are not yet in college — can make real scientific discoveries using freely available telescope data on the internet.
“My paper demonstrates that public archival telescope data is a critical tool for new discoveries,” Julian said, “and that young astronomers are capable of uncovering these findings.”
Big Words
- Dwarf galaxy — a small galaxy with far fewer stars than large ones like our Milky Way; imagine a small pond compared to the ocean
- Quenched galaxy — a galaxy that has stopped making new stars, as if someone switched off the star factory
- Backsplash galaxy — a galaxy thought to have once passed close to a big neighbor, lost its gas, and then bounced outward into isolation
- Archival data — older telescope images and measurements stored in public databases that anyone can study
- Astrophysics — the science of how stars, galaxies, and the universe work using physics and math
Fun Fact
The Milky Way galaxy contains about 200 to 400 billion stars. The three tiny galaxies Julian found contain far fewer — making them like small campfires compared to a blazing bonfire!
Think About It
If you could name a galaxy after yourself, what would it mean to you — and what kind of galaxy would you want it to be?
Sources
- UC Berkeley News — A UC Berkeley undergraduate’s research leads to an astronomical first (Oct. 6, 2026)
- Universe Today — A Student Finds Three Galaxies and Possibly Solves a Mystery (Oct. 9, 2026)
- Phys.org — Undergraduate student may have solved puzzle regarding isolated galaxies that have stopped producing stars (Oct. 7, 2026)
- The Astrophysical Journal — Shapiro Dwarf Galaxies paper published Oct. 6, 2026