which is the nearest galaxy to the milky way?

Answer 1

Andromeda - 2 Million Light Years & on a collision course with our Milky Way!

Answer 2

It's technically the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which is only 25,000 light years from Earth and 42,000 light years from the core of the Milky Way. Canis Major Dwarf is a gravitationally bound companion of our galaxy, and it is being ripped apart by the gravity of the Milky Way! Canis Major Dwarf has only about a billion stars, compared to at least 200 billion in the Milky Way. Among galaxies that are comparable in size to our own galaxy, Andromeda is the closest, but it is 2.5 million light years away.

Answer 3

Andromeda Galaxy is the closest galaxy from our milky way galaxy. Andromeda is the spiral galaxy which bounds to our milky way galaxy. Distance between milky way and Andromeda galaxy is two hundreds of thousands easy 3 hundred and sixty 5 days or 2,538,000 easy years, the age of the superstar is 9 billion years. There are a million trillion stars are latest in Andromeda galaxy. there will be a explosion between our milky way galaxy and Andromeda galaxy after approximately of four billions

Answer 4

The nearest galaxy to us is the Small Magellanic Cloud. This galaxy is irregular. The SMC is about 125,000 light years away from the Milky Way.

Answer 5

Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy 25,000 Lite years

Answer 6

An international team of astronomers from France, Italy, the UK and Australia has found a previously unknown galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way.

This newly-discovered galaxy takes the record for the nearest galaxy to the centre of the Milky Way. Called the Canis Major dwarf galaxy after the constellation in which it lies, it is about 25000 light years away from thesolar system and 42000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way.

This is closer than the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, discovered in 1994, which is also colliding with the Milky Way. The discovery shows that the Milky Way is building up its own disk by absorbing small satellite galaxies. The research is to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society within the next few weeks.

The discovery of the Canis Major dwarf was made possible by a recent survey of the sky in infrared light (the Two-Micron All Sky Survey or "2MASS"), which has allowed astronomers to look beyond the clouds of dust in the disk of the Milky Way.

Until now, the dwarf galaxy lay undetected behind the dense disk. "It's like putting on infrared night-vision goggles," says team-member Dr Rodrigo Ibata of Strasbourg Observatory. "We are now able to study a part of the Milky Way that has been previously out of sight".

The new dwarf galaxy was detected by its M-giant stars =AD cool, red stars that shine especially brightly in infrared light. "We have used these rare M-giant stars as beacons to trace out the shape and location of the new galaxy because its numerous other stars are too faint for us to see," explains Nicolas Martin, also of Strasbourg Observatory.

"They are particularly useful stars as we can measure their distances, and so map out the three-dimensional structure of distant regions of the Milky Way disk."

In this way, the astronomers found the main dismembered corpse of the dwarf galaxy in Canis Major and long trails of stars leading back to it. It seems that streams of stars pulled out of the cannibalised Canis Major galaxy not only contribute to the outer reaches of the Milky Way's disk, but may also pass close to the Sun.

Astronomers currently believe that large galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their present majestic proportions by consuming their smaller galactic neighbours. They have found that cannibalised galaxies add stars to the vast haloes around large galaxies.

However, until now, they did not appreciate that even the disks of galaxies can grow in this fashion. Computer simulations show that the Milky Way has been taking stars from the Canis Major dwarf and adding them to its own disk - and will continue to do so.

"On galactic scales, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is a lightweight of about only one billion Suns," said Dr. Michele Bellazzini of Bologna Observatory.

"This small galaxy is unlikely to hold together much longer. It is being pushed and pulled by the colossal gravity of our Milky Way, which has been progressively stealing its stars and pulling it apart." Some remnants of the Canis Major dwarf form a ring around the disk of the Milky Way.

"The Canis Major dwarf galaxy may have added up to 1% more mass to our Galaxy," said Dr Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney. "This is also an important discovery because it highlights that the Milky Way is not in its middle age - it is still forming."

"Past interactions of the sort we are seeing here could be responsible for some of the exquisite detail we see today in the structure of the Galaxy," says Dr Michael Irwin of the University of Cambridge.

Answer 7

the Andromeda Galaxy, also a spiral, is about 2-3 million light years distant.

Nearest Galaxy = Andromeda, to look up information on web enter the name in a search engine of the topic that you want :)

Answer 8

Canis Major dwarf galaxy

Answer 9

There are some clouds of stars near us, like the Magellanic clouds, but they don't rotate much or have defined cores, so they're not considered galaxies. The nearest real one is Andromeda.

Answer 10

THAM 153 You nailed!

As a matter of fact they are visible to the naked eye if you live in South America. They are due South. And I mean South Pole!.