what is the closest galaxy to us?

Answer 1

Andromeda Galaxy

Answer 2

As someone who sees them in the sky most evenings, I would ordinarily say the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, called the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud.

However, professional astronomers have discovered a closer galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf, because it lies in the direction of Sagittarius in the night sky.

It's a small galaxy that went unnoticed until discovered in 1994 by R. Ibata, G. Gilmore and M. Irwin at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. The reason it hadn't been seen earlier is because it is very dim, is spread out over the sky, and there are so many Milky Way stars masking it.

The distance to the Sagittarius Dwarf is about one third of the distance to the LMC, at 78,000 light years from us. Astronomers now believe that this galaxy is slowly being torn apart by the vast gravitational forces of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

However, not to be outdone, in 2003 an even closer galaxy was discovered by an international team of professional astronomers from France, Italy, UK and Australia. It is actually colliding with the Milky Way.

Called the Canis Major dwarf galaxy after the constellation in which it lies, it is about 25,000 light years away. It's therefore closer than the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy which is also colliding with us.

Answer 3

If you mean from the Earth, the closest known galaxy is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy at a distance of 25,000 light years away from us. This is small irregular galaxy discovered in 2003 that contains 1 billion stars, that is, about 100 times less stars found in other standard size galaxies. Still, a galaxy (so there's your answer!)

Answer 4

The Milky Way's satellite galaxies - the large and small Magenalenic clouds. Then the Andromeda galaxy.

Answer 5

The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy orbiting our own at only 160000 light years distance.

If you do not want to consider galactic satellites, then the closest one is Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, would be out closest neighbor.

Answer 6

It depends how you define galaxy.

Andromeda is generally accepted as the closest galaxy to the Milky Way. However, there are those that would argue that the Greater and Lesser Magellenic clouds, which are groups of stars that orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but are distinct from it, might count as galaxies. If we were somewhere else, and they were here without us, we could count them as galaxies.

It's similar to our relationship to the Moon. We don't consider the Moon a planet, but a satellite of the Earth. But the Moon is larger than Mercury, and if the Earth wasn't here, we'd say the Moon is a planet.

Answer 7

The Magellenic Clouds (I think the Large one)

There are also minor, nearly impossible to see dwarf galaxies even closer - touching the Milky Way, and between Andromeda and us in the surrounding neighborhood.

Answer 8

probably either the fornax or sulptor systems. Andromeda is 2 million light years away it isn't that close. its just big. the magellanic clouds are also close since they are orbiting the milky way (as are fornax and sculptor). so it would be one of the smaller orbitting galaxies that would be the closest to us. and they are galaxies, dwarf galaxies for the most part getting torn to pieces by the milky way but they are still galaxies so they count.

Answer 9

There are a couple of small galaxies close to us called the Magellanic Clouds. These are ususally considered as satellites of our galaxy.

The nearest large galaxy is usually identified as the one in Andromeda.

Answer 10

the galaxy called Andromeda - whereas our Galaxy spans a mighty 100 odd Million light years in breadth, the Andromeda Galaxy, our closest neighbor in stellar terms - is about just as far as that away... *** i slept through my Science classes ***