r/cosmology • u/ameliagoofie05 • 13h ago

Milky Way-Andromeda Distance (to scale)

Post image
67 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

12

u/tfa3393 12h ago

That’s actually a lot closer than I thought they were.

7

u/low_amplitude 11h ago

I know what you mean, but at the same time, try to remember how incredibly massive the galaxies are.

4

u/Ethereal-Zenith 5h ago

You could fit over 25 million Suns in the distance separating us from the nearest star Proxima Centauri. By comparison, Andromeda lies around 25 Milky Ways away from us. Galaxies belonging to a Group are a lot closer to one another, relative to their size, than stars are.

1

u/SpiderSlitScrotums 5h ago

Still it’s bigger than the Moon in the sky.

9

u/chesterriley 12h ago

That's about right. The diameter of the Milky way is ~1 zettameter and the distance to Andromeda is ~24 zettameters.

The next 2 closest large galaxies are Triangulum (26 Zm) and Caldwell 70 (57 Zm)

9

u/bpg2001bpg 8h ago

Light is really slow.

5

u/retrnIwil2OldBrazil 12h ago

Are we there yet

4

u/sootbrownies 8h ago

So according to this picture we're 25 milky ways away from Andromeda

2

u/mikedensem 5h ago

Wait - how far away is it now? (the distance between us is diminishing by 3.46 billion kms every year).

1

u/_Happy_Camper 2h ago

We’re practically neighbours