Astronomers have traced the violent and catastrophic evolution of Andromeda, our closest galactic neighbor, by analyzing the composition and motion of more than 500 stars in the nearby galaxy.
Located 2.5 million light years from Earth, Andromeda is the closest big neighbor to our galaxy, Milky Way. He is believed to have had a number of interactions with others galaxies and spherical clustersforming structures like the giant stellar stream of Andromeda.
In recent work, researchers have identified various chemical compositions and motions of 556 red giant branching stars in a region of Andromeda called the Northeast Shelf.
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The team came to the conclusion that the shelf is a tidal characteristic – a flow of stars and material – formed by gravitational interactions with another galaxy and that it consists mainly of debris from the effects of this cosmic collision.
“The remnants of each catastrophe can be identified by studying the movement of stars and their chemical composition,” said Ivanna Escala, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Observatory in Pasadena, California, who is involved in the new work. statement.
“Together, this information serves as a kind of fingerprint that identifies stars that have joined the galaxy in a collision,” she added.
Studying these streams of material could help scientists understand how a galaxy receives more material and could reveal the history, appearance and composition of the galaxy and its surrounding characteristics, the researchers hope.
The results were presented on June 13 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.
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