![]() This has been called into question by early 21st-century studies indicating a possibly lower mass for the Andromeda Galaxy Īnd a higher mass for the Milky Way. The mass of either galaxy is difficult to estimate with any accuracy, but it was long thought that the Andromeda Galaxy was more massive than the Milky Way by a margin of some 25% to 50%. The virial mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Milky Way, at 1 trillion solar masses (2.0 ×10 42 kilograms). ![]() ![]() The galaxy's name stems from the area of Earth's sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which itself is named after the princess who was the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology. The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: / æ n ˈ d r ɒ m ɪ d ə/), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula, is a barred spiral galaxy with the diameter of about 46.56 kiloparsecs (152,000 light-years) approximately 765 kpc (2.5 million light-years) from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. (diameter 25.0 mag/arcsec 2 B-band isophote) Z = −0.001004 (minus sign indicates blueshift) A true color picture of the Andromeda Galaxy with satellite galaxies M32 (center left above the galactic nucleus) and M110 (center left below the galaxy)
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