By Ron Cowen
It’s an extreme example of arrested development. The baby began growing normally but soon stopped, not to resume maturing until well into middle age. In this case, the late bloomer is a tiny galaxy called Leo A, which lies only 2.6 million light-years from Earth. Leo A appears to have retained features typical of much younger, more remote objects.
A new Hubble Space Telescope study of this wispy galaxy “has the potential to change the way astronomers build theoretical models for galaxy evolution,” says Andrew Cole of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He and his colleagues describe their findings in the April 10 Astrophysical Journal Letters.