The Hubble telescope has revealed what a “failed galaxy” looks like. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), it has confirmed the existence of an object – a starless cloud of gas dominated by dark-matter. Nicknamed ‘Cloud-9’ it’s being considered a remnant of early galaxy formation and this makes it the first confirmed detection of such an object. The findings were reported by a team of scientists in The Astrophysical Journal Letters last week.
🆕 New astronomical object just dropped!
This starless, dark-matter-dominated cloud, nicknamed ‘Cloud-9’, is the first such object seen in the Universe. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/BV0gr1H0Ae
— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) January 5, 2026
“This is a tale of a failed galaxy,” Alejandro Benitez-Llambay of the Milano-Bicocca University in Milan, said in a statement. “It tells us that we have found in the local Universe a primordial building block of a galaxy that hasn’t formed.”
This cloud, located 14 million-light years away, has been officially named Reionization-Limited H I Cloud or ‘RELHIC’ which was thought to be a faint dwarf galaxy. Its core is composed of neutral hydrogen with a mass equivalent to one million Suns and it’s about 4,900 light-years in diameter. Scientists think Cloud-9 is dominated by dark matter equivalent to about five billion solar masses.
Hubble telescope substantiates Cloud-9 findings
According to ESA, the starless relic was discovered three years ago by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Guizhou, China, and follow-up observations by the US-based Green Bank Telescope and the Very Large Array facilities revealed more about it. However, the lack of stars wasn’t confirmed until scientists turned Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) towards it.
Objects like REHLIC are dark matter clouds that failed to accumulate enough gas to form stars. Since there are no stars, there are no elements that would give birth to other objects like planets and asteroids.
“We know from theory that most of the mass in the Universe is expected to be dark matter, but it’s difficult to detect this dark material because it doesn’t emit light. Cloud-9 gives us a rare look at a dark-matter-dominated cloud,” researcher Andrew Fox of AURA/STScI for the ESA explained.
Cloud-9 was discovered on the outskirts of a nearby spiral galaxy, Messier 94 (M94) and gas distortions suggest that the two are bound gravitationally. Astronomers have found several hydrogen clouds near the Milky Way galaxy and they seem to be bigger and more irregular. Cloud-9, on the other hand, is smaller, more compact and highly spherical.
Researchers believe there’s still a chance that Cloud-9 could evolve into a full fledged galaxy. It seems to be at a ‘sweet spot’ because if the mass had grown over five billion solar masses, the gases would have collapsed, forming stars and eventually taking the form of galaxies and if it was smaller, the gases could have dispersed and ionised before eventually fading away.
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