The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor might be up to five times larger than previously thought.
"We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo…extends to a very large radius and it actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky," said study team member Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
"We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo…extends to a very large radius and it actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky," said study team member Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Also known as M31, Andromeda is located only about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, making it our nearest galactic neighbor.
Like our own Milky Way, Andromeda is a classic spiral galaxy, which typically consists of three main parts: a flattened disk, a bright central bulge of densely packed stars and an extended spherical halo where stars are more sparsely distributed.
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