Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Andromeda (And)  ·  Contains:  Andromeda Galaxy  ·  M 110  ·  M 31  ·  M 32  ·  NGC 205  ·  NGC 206  ·  NGC 221  ·  NGC 224
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M31 - Andromeda Galaxy, Paul Ricker
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M31 - Andromeda Galaxy

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M31 - Andromeda Galaxy, Paul Ricker
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M31 - Andromeda Galaxy

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Description

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This is the nearest large (Milky Way-size) galaxy to our own. It's on a collision course for us and will get here in about a billion years. During the ensuing collision virtually no stars will actually hit each other, but some stars will be ejected and the rest will settle into a new, merged, galaxy. Clouds of gas in the two galaxies will collide and produce a burst of new star formation. Eventually the central supermassive black holes of the two galaxies will merge, possibly becoming briefly active due to accreting material and producing relativistic jets. The entire process will take several hundred million years. M31 is already warped, I think (?) due to interaction with its satellite galaxies M110 (below center) and M32 (above left).

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M31 - Andromeda Galaxy, Paul Ricker