Image of the Andromeda Galaxy 1888
For this blog I wanted to talk about The Andromeda Galaxy. Other than it being the closest galaxy to our Milky Way I really didn’t know much about it. The Andromeda galaxy was first photographed in 1888 by Issac Roberts (picture above). Andromeda is located over 2 million light-years away. It is set to collide with the Milky Way in 4.5 billion years. I wonder what happens when two galaxies collide? The Andromeda galaxy is significantly larger than the Milky Way, cotanting about one trillion stars, compared to the 100-400 billion in the Milky Way. Andromeda is thought to have a colossal black hole in the center, much like the Milky Way’s Sagittarius A*. I actually did not know our galaxy had a blackhole at the center of it until now! Another cool thing is that observations of Andromeda have provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. The galaxy’s rotational speed indicates that there is a lot more mass present than what we can see, presumed to be dark matter. As of now we can’t observe the planets within the Andromeda galaxy, due to technological limitations, but I wonder if there are any habitable Earth-like planets there and if so how many? Even if we could, we would be observing them 2 million years in the past, so probably best to search for life a little bit closer to home.
Garrett's Night Sky 