Table of Contents
The closest known galaxy to us is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, at 236,000,000,000,000,000 km (25,000 light years) from the Sun. The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy is the next closest , at 662,000,000,000,000,000 km (70,000 light years) from the Sun.
What is nearest galaxy to Milky Way?
Since it is so far from us, it takes light from Andromeda more than 2.5 million years to bridge the gap. Despite the immense distance, Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way, and it’s bright enough in the night sky that it’s visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere.
What is our nearest galaxy?
The Andromeda galaxy, M31, is a faint fuzzy patch that appears, with binoculars, as a lens-shaped object. It is a galaxy rather like ours at a distance of about 2 million light years. It has two dwarf elliptical satellites, which can be seen with a small telescope.
How old is our galaxy?
Most galaxies are between 10 billion and 13.6 billion years old. Our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, so most galaxies formed when the universe was quite young! Astronomers believe that our own Milky Way galaxy is approximately 13.6 billion years old.
What is the largest galaxy in the universe?
Largest galaxy: IC 1101 Our Milky Way galaxy is around 100,000 light-years across, but that’s fairly average for a spiral galaxy. In comparison, the largest known galaxy, called IC 1101, is 50 times larger and about 2,000 times more massive than our galactic home.
What are the 4 types of galaxy?
Galaxies 101 The smallest of galaxies contain a “mere” few hundred million stars while the largest galaxies contain up to one hundred trillion stars! Scientists have been able to segment galaxies into 4 main types: spiral, elliptical, peculiar, and irregular.
Can we travel to another galaxy?
The technology required to travel between galaxies is far beyond humanity’s present capabilities, and currently only the subject of speculation, hypothesis, and science fiction. However, theoretically speaking, there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel is impossible.
What galaxy is Earth on?
Earth is in the second largest galaxy of the Local Group – a galaxy called the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a large spiral galaxy. Earth is located in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way (called the Orion Arm) which lies about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Galaxy.
What is the oldest thing in the universe?
Astronomers have found the farthest known source of radio emissions in the universe: a galaxy-swallowing supermassive black hole.
How old is our Earth?
Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years. Scientists have scoured the Earth searching for the oldest rocks to radiometrically date.
Which is the oldest star?
Methuselah Star Name Age (in billions of years) Distance HD 140283 or the Methuselah Star 13.7 ± 0.7 200 ly 2MASS J18082002-5104378 B 13.53 1950 ly BD +17° 3248 13.8 ± 4 968 ly SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 13.6 6000 ly.
What is the most powerful thing in the universe?
Quasars inhabit the centers of active galaxies and are among the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects known in the universe, emitting up to a thousand times the energy output of the Milky Way, which contains 200–400 billion stars.
What is biggest thing in the universe?
The largest known ‘object’ in the Universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. This is a ‘galactic filament’, a vast cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity, and it’s estimated to be about 10 billion light-years across!.
Which is the most beautiful galaxy?
The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. Its ‘closeness’ to our planet makes it the most distant object visible to the naked eye on Earth. It is the nearest giant galaxy and contains approximately the same number of stars as the Milky Way.
What is the youngest type of galaxy?
GN-z11 is the youngest and most distant galaxy scientists have observed. This video zooms to its location, some 32 billion light-years away. GN-z11 is 13.4 billion years old and formed 400 million years after the Big Bang. Its irregular shape is typical for galaxies of that time period.
What is a ghost galaxy?
The Ant 2 “ghost” galaxy is a large, dim dwarf galaxy that scientists have discovered near the edge of the Milky Way. While low in mass, Ant 2 is about the same size as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
How do you identify a galaxy?
The deeper astronomers look into the universe, the more they see that the expansion of the universe has stretched light, shifting it toward the red end of the spectrum. By measuring the amount of redshift, astronomers can determine how far away a given galaxy is.
Is it possible to travel faster than light?
Physicists’ current understanding of spacetime comes from Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. General Relativity states that space and time are fused and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Will the universe end?
Astronomers once thought the universe could collapse in a Big Crunch. Now most agree it will end with a Big Freeze. Trillions of years in the future, long after Earth is destroyed, the universe will drift apart until galaxy and star formation ceases. Slowly, stars will fizzle out, turning night skies black.
What is outside the universe?
To answer the question of what’s outside the universe, we first need to define exactly what we mean by “universe.” If you take it to mean literally all the things that could possibly exist in all of space and time, then there can’t be anything outside the universe.
