Andromeda Galaxy

The largest galaxy in the Local Group and the most distant thing the naked eye can see. It is falling toward the Milky Way.

The picture hangs at that distance facing Earth, as large as it is on the sky; how deep the object is cannot be seen, so it is flat.

Taken by

Digitized Sky Survey

Picture spans

about 160,000 ly

From the Sun

2.54 million light-years

RA / Dec

10.68° / 41.27°

Credit

Digitized Sky Survey 2 (STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, UKSTU/AAO), via CDS hips2fits

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 D25 isophotal diameter of about 46.56 kiloparsecs (152,000 light-years) and is approximately 765 kpc (2.5 million light-years) from Earth.

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