The Death of Andromeda

Podcast: Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder · Single Malt Sky

Opublikowano: 2026-10-18

The Andromeda Galaxy is not disappearing, exploding or running out of stars. But it may be entering something astronomers recognize as a kind of galactic old age: it is gradually losing the ability to make new ones. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers reconstructed 500 million years of star formation across two-thirds of Andromeda's disk. They found a long decline, followed by an especially steep drop during the past 40 million years. The galaxy's great ring of stellar nurseries is going quiet. This week on Star Trails, we'll find out how astronomers read the fossil record of 200...