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The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It was originally named the Andromeda Nebula and is cataloged as Messier 31 , M31 , and NGC 224 . Andromeda has a D 25 isophotal diameter of about 46.56 kiloparsecs (152,000 light-years ) [ 8 ] and is approximately 765 kpc (2.5 million light-years ...
The studies also suggest that M33, the Triangulum Galaxy—the third-largest and third-brightest galaxy of the Local Group—will participate in the collision event, too. Its most likely fate is to end up orbiting the merger remnant of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies and finally to merge with it in an even more distant future.
The most famous deep-sky object in Andromeda is the spiral galaxy cataloged as Messier 31 (M31) or NGC 224 but known colloquially as the Andromeda Galaxy for the constellation. [53] M31 is one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye, 2.2 million light-years from Earth (estimates range up to 2.5 million light-years). [ 54 ]
Scientists say there's a 50/50 chance that our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy, challenging previous certainty about this cosmic event.
In this drawing by Charles Messier, satellite galaxy M110 appears at the upper right. Charles Messier never included the galaxy in his list, but it was depicted by him, together with M32, on his drawing of "Nébuleuse D'Andromède", later known as the Andromeda Galaxy. A label of the drawing indicates that Messier first saw the object in 1773.
The Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest deep-sky object the human eye can spot at about 2.5 million light-years away. It can also be tricky to find, but here's how you can spot our galactic neighbor.
The Andromeda Galaxy with M110 at upper left and M32 to the right of the core. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) has satellite galaxies just like the Milky Way.Orbiting M31 are at least 13 dwarf galaxies: the brightest and largest is M110, which can be seen with a basic telescope.
While objects in that direction lie in the Zone of Avoidance (the part of the night sky obscured by the Milky Way galaxy) and are thus difficult to study with visible wavelengths, X-ray observations have revealed that region of space to be dominated by the Norma Cluster (ACO 3627), [7] [8] a massive cluster of galaxies containing a ...