'Cannibalised' galaxies feeding new stars.NEW pictures of a galaxy's outskirts reveal that many stars there are simply the leftovers of smaller galaxies it has "cosmically cannibalised". Stars around the Andromeda Galaxy Andromeda Galaxy, cataloged as M31 and NGC 224, the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way and the only one visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. It is also known as the Great Nebula in Andromeda. It is 2. were captured by an international astronomy team in the largest ever panoramic survey of the system. The survey covered a region nearly a million light years across and charted Andromeda's unexplored borders. It detected faint stars and giant structures which are the remnants of smaller galaxies, "cannibalised by Andromeda as part of its ongoing expansion". At 2.5m light years from our own galaxy (the Milky Way Milky Way, the galaxy of which the sun and solar system are a part, seen as a broad band of light arching across the night sky from horizon to horizon; if not blocked by the horizon, it would be seen as a circle around the entire sky. ) the Andromeda Galaxy is our closest giant neighbour. The galaxy is so large, it is visible to the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere. Another nearby galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy The Triangulum Galaxy (also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598) is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum. The galaxy is also sometimes informally referred to as the Pinwheel Galaxy , was seen to be surrounded by a giant stellar "halo" that the team believes is proof of a recent "encounter" with Andromeda. Stars are pulled from Triangulum as it orbits Andromeda, due to the enormous gravity of the massive galaxy. These stars are then "consumed" by Andromeda and contribute to its unstoppable expansion. CAPTION(S): The Triangulum Galaxy |
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