Earth & SkyGreek → English
Andromeda
/ænˈdrɒmɪdə/noun
The northern constellation, and the large spiral galaxy that sits within it.
The Greek roots
ἀνδρός
andrós
of a man
μέδομαι
médomai
to rule, care for
Literally: “ruler of men”
The story of the word
In the myth she is chained to a rock to settle her mother's boast about beauty, and Perseus takes her off it; the sky holds the whole cast, with Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Perseus and the sea monster around her. The galaxy borrowed the name because its faint smudge lies inside the constellation's outline. Until the 1920s astronomers argued whether that smudge was a cloud inside our own galaxy, and Hubble settled it with Cepheid variables.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
PerseusandroidCassiopeia
In a sentence
On a dark night Andromeda is visible without binoculars, a grey oval the size of a thumbnail.
Our galaxy and Andromeda are due to collide in a few billion years.