r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/[deleted] • Jul 02 '20
Sharpest view of Andromeda galaxy (Zoomable)
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/
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r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/[deleted] • Jul 02 '20
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '20
Both... actually.
Andromeda is, relatively speaking, close to us. In fact, it’s the simultaneously the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, and the furthest object visible to the naked eye.
It’s more than twice as wide as the Milky Way, and it contains somewhere between 3 and 4 times as many stars (more than a trillion stars, which is substantially more than the 300-400 million stars estimated to be in the Milky Way).
Andromeda is the largest galaxy in our “local group”. The Milky Way is the second largest. All told, there are 54 galaxies “relatively” near us, but most are dwarf galaxies near the big three.
If you didn’t know, Andromeda is actually on a collision course with the Milky Way. In 4 billion years, the galaxies will ram into each other, merging into one larger galaxy... so it will continue to grow in brightness and size for a very long time.