Posted on 05/30/2005 6:23:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Andromeda galaxy just got bigger -- three times bigger, astronomers said on Monday.
The galaxy is not actually expanding. But new measurements suggest that the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way is three times broader than astronomers had thought.
They now believe a thin sprinkling of stars once thought to be a halo is in fact part of Andromeda's main disk.
That makes the spiral galaxy, so close to Earth that it appeared as a fuzzy blob to the ancients, more than 220,000 light-years across -- triple the previous estimate of 70,000 to 80,000 light-years.
It appears that the outer fringes of the disk were made when smaller galaxies slammed together, they told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Minneapolis.
The structure is too bumpy to have been formed otherwise, said Rodrigo Ibata of the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg in France.
"This giant disk discovery will be very hard to reconcile with computer simulations of forming galaxies. You just don't get giant rotating disks from the accretion of small galaxy fragments," Ibata said in a statement.
Ibata, Scott Chapman of the California Institute of Technology and colleagues in Britain and Australia worked together using observations from the Keck II telescope in Hawaii.
They studied the motions of about 3,000 stars thought to be a mere halo and not an actual part of the galaxy's disk.
But they are in fact sited in the plane of the Andromeda disk itself and move at a velocity that suggests they are in orbit around the center of the galaxy, Ibata's team said.
Andromeda is 2 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year -- about 6 trillion miles.
I think they needed what printers call an "em-dash," rather than a hyphen.
LOLOL...giggle...snort.
Bzzzt! Once again the MSM gets the wrong answer. A quick search of Google for "nearest galaxies" gives http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/L/Li/List_of_nearest_galaxies.htm
1. Milky Way Galaxy - home galaxy of Earth
2. Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy - 25,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
3. Sagittarius Dwarf - 81,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
4. Large Magellanic Cloud - 160,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
5. Small Magellanic Cloud - 190,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
6. Ursa Minor Dwarf - 205,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
7. Draco Dwarf - 248,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
8. Sculptor Dwarf - 254,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
9. Sextans Dwarf - 257,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
10. Carina Dwarf - 283,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
11. Fornax Dwarf - 427,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
12. Leo II - 701,000 ly
13. Leo I - 890,000 ly
14. Phoenix Dwarf - 1,271,000 ly
15. Barnards Galaxy (NGC 6822) - 1,760,000 ly
16. NGC185 - 2,021,000 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
17. NGC147 - 2,152,000 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
18. Andromeda Galaxy (M31) - 2,363,000 ly
Not counting our own, there are 16 galaxies closer than the Andromeda Galaxy. It took much longer to format the list than to search for it.
Here's my question: When Andromeda and the Milky Way collide, when will those of us still around start to feel something?
----the spiral galaxy, so close to Earth that it appeared as a fuzzy blob to the ancients-----
It still looks like a fuzzy blob to the naked eye if you can get into skies dark enough to see it.
Saw it near Ft. Davis, TX once, naked eyed, in my 8-inch dobsonian, and on a 15 inch dob...neat night it was.
Doggone, I have made some big miscalculations, but this one was a whopper, huh?
Here's one for you. ;-)
That is so wrong! LOL. If your spouse reads that comment it is the dog house ....the dank dark hidden dog house kept for special crimes ....for you.
Yup.
"thought-astronomers"They are like thought-police, but with broader jurisdiction.
(rimshot!)
Thanks for the 'em-dash'!
Hey, it's what Mrs. Billorites said to me.
Upon first viewing.
LOL. Oooops. ;-D
How long will it be till the Rats try to tax it for being too successful?
Andromeda:
If this planet ever was visited by space creatures I doubt the government would openly admit it. Wouldn't want to scare the sheeple...
Mrrrrow!
You are correct of course but for me personally I would discount the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way and Andromeda itself. Astronomers wouldn't but that's just me. That still leaves 4 closer than Andromeda however so the error is still there.
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