Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
Credit: CFHT/MegaCam/PAndAS (Principal investigator: Alan McConnachie; Image processing: Marcos Arias)
Astronomers unveiled Andromeda XXXV, the smallest and faintest galaxy ever found, orbiting the Andromeda Galaxy—a millionth the size of the Milky Way.
Credit: CFHT/MegaCam/PAndAS (Principal investigator: Alan McConnachie; Image processing: Marcos Arias)
Defying cosmic odds, this tiny galaxy survived violent early universe conditions—challenging long-held beliefs about galactic destruction.
Representative pic
Unlike known dwarf galaxies, Andromeda XXXV is fully functional, forming stars despite being as faint as a cosmic ghost, according to Marcos Arias (University of Michigan).
Scientists are stunned that such a small galaxy exists at all, raising big questions about how galaxies survive in hostile cosmic environments.
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Orbiting 3 million light-years away, it is the dimmest satellite galaxy around Andromeda—so faint it was nearly invisible to telescopes.
How did Andromeda XXXV hold onto star-forming gas when others perished? Astronomers now face a galactic "murder mystery" about which galaxies live or die.
Credit: NASA
Current theories predicted such galaxies shouldn’t survive the early universe’s extreme heat and radiation—forcing scientists to rewrite galactic evolution models.
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“It’s like a fully functional human the size of a grain of rice,” says astronomer Eric Bell—tiny yet complete, rewriting our sense of what a galaxy can be.
Representative pic/NASA, ESA
Andromeda XXXV may be the first of many ultra-tiny galaxies. If more are found, it could transform our understanding of how galaxies, including our Milky Way, were born.
Representative pic/NASA