46. The Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda galaxy is one of the most famous galaxies of all time, second only to our own galaxy, the Milky Way. At 200,000 light years across, the Andromeda galaxy is one of the biggest galaxies known to humans, double the size of the Milky Way, It is also our nearest neighbour, located 2.54 million light years from Earth.

The Andromeda galaxy is actually visible in the night sky on a very dark night, and visible through a telescope. It is around the size of the full moon and disc shaped.

Could humans ever travel to the Andromeda galaxy? Not with today's technology. The average human lives for around 75 years, but even if we were able to travel near the speed of light, it would take millions of years to arrive. For now, we will have to make do with looking at it through a telescope.

Who discovered the Andromeda galaxy? The earliest observation was in the year 905 by Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi, who was a Persian astronomer. He described it as a small cloud in the night sky. Then, in 1923, the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble made a startling discovery. By following the pathways of stars within Andromeda, he was able to provide that this small cloud was actually a different Galaxy. Edwin Hubble was made even more famous when the Hubble space telescope was named after him in 1990. Check out my YouTube video to find out more about the Hubble space telescope.

Every Galaxy has a black hole in the centre of it, and the Andromeda galaxy is no different. but, the pull of it is so strong that scientists, believe that there is a second black hole in there! The black hole is the size of 100,000 suns! The black hole cannot be seen with a telescope because it is hidden inside a star cluster named B023-G078. It is classified as a intermediate black hole.

Our galaxy -the milky way- is going to collide with the andromeda galaxy. Right now the two galaxies are hurtling towards each other at hundreds of thousands of kilometres per hour. At this rate, in about 6 billion years from now the two galaxies will collide. It will be chaos.

I hope you enjoyed reading about the Andromeda galaxy! To find out more, go to NASA.gov or space.com. Or you can read my other blogs on henryperraton.com.

Next time, we'll be looking at the Mars rover, Opportunity and its great adventure around the red planet.

Until next time, Give Me Space!