BY C STONE | STONE NEWS NETWORK ||| SPACE
Andromeda is the closest galaxy to the milky way, which is located 2.5 million light-years away. Using the Hubble Space telescope, we have a 3-dimensional view of the galaxy now. Over 1,000 hubble orbits have gathered many photos of the galaxy, uncovering clues about how it formed, and where it's going.
This is a wide-angle view of the distribution of known satellite galaxies orbiting the large Andromeda galaxy (M31), located 2.5 million light-years away. The Hubble Space Telescope was used to study the entire population of 36 mini-galaxies circled in yellow. Andromeda is the bright spindle-shaped object at image center. All the dwarf galaxies seem to be confined to a plane, all orbiting in the same direction.
The Milky Way galaxy has a population of smaller galaxies, but are on a different evolution path. The Milky Way's galaxies have stopped forming stars, but Andromeda have continued to form new stars.
“We see that the duration for which the satellites can continue forming new stars really depends on how massive they are and on how close they are to the Andromeda galaxy,” said lead author Alessandro Savino of the University of California at Berkeley. “It is a clear indication of how small-galaxy growth is disturbed by the influence of a massive galaxy like Andromeda.”
Andromeda's galaxies appear to be lined up neatly in the same orbiting direction. They suspect a violent merger in the past which may have contributed to this anomaly.
The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is about the same size as the Milky Way galaxy. They are both giant spiral galaxies who will likely collide in about 4 billion years.
Understanding the speed required to escape into space from Earth is fascinating: It requires a minimum of 6.8 miles per second - or 11 km/second. To escape the Milky Way's galaxy pull, it requires a launch speed 342 miles per second (or 550 km/second).
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