2023-12-25 22:00:00
■Neighboring galaxy 2.5 million light years away from our galaxy
■250,000 light years in diameter… 1 trillion stars in Andromeda
■After 4 billion years, it merges with the Milky Way and is reborn as a giant galaxy.
The last remaining blue ocean universe. The United States, Russia, China, and India have awakened to the value of space early on and are pioneering space. Our country is now jumping into space development in earnest. We try to tell the story of the unknown universe, its vast and gigantic world, in a fun way so that everyone, from children to adults, can easily understand it.
Andromeda Galaxy. Photo provided by NASA
There are numerous galaxies in the universe. Within that galaxy, there are countless stars like the sun, and there are planets and satellites around the stars. The galaxy to which the Earth belongs is ‘our galaxy’. We have not yet been able to directly see our galaxy, which is 100,000 light-years in diameter. This is because none of the probes sent by humanity have yet gone outside our galaxy.
Although we can’t see our galaxy directly, we can see other galaxies. Among them, there is a galaxy that can be seen with the naked eye, and that is the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda and is the brightest and most massive galaxy in the Local Group of Galaxies to which our Milky Way belongs. The official name of this galaxy is ‘Andromeda Galaxy’, but it is commonly called ‘Andromeda’. The distance from our galaxy is 2.5 million light years.
In the Japanese animation ‘Galaxy Express 999’, the main characters Cheol and Maetel’s final destination is Andromeda (Planet Rametal).
It is often thought that the closest galaxy to our Milky Way is the Andromeda Galaxy, but Andromeda is not the closest galaxy as there are countless satellite galaxies around our Milky Way, including the Magellanic Cloud. However, it is the closest galaxy among galaxies with a similar size to our Milky Way, and it is also the most distant group of celestial bodies that can be observed with the naked eye.
Andromeda has attracted the attention of astronomers since ancient times because it can be seen with the naked eye from Earth without observation equipment such as an astronomical telescope.
It is said that the first person to discover Andromeda was Isfahan, a Persian astronomer, in 905. Later, in 964, Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi described it as a ‘small cloud’ in a book called ‘The Book of Fixed Stars’. From then on, Andromeda was known as a nebula (a cloud composed of interstellar matter and hydrogen).
German astronomer Simon Marius was the first to observe Andromeda using a telescope in 1612, but he did not know its exact nature.
Afterwards, many astronomers observed and studied Andromeda, but everyone knew it only as a nebula.
Then, in October 1923, American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that Andromeda was not a nebula but a galaxy. From this point on, Hubble began to gain fame. This is because it was a discovery that expanded the area of the universe, which was previously thought to be the entire universe, including our galaxy, billions of times.
Imagine the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way merging together. Photo provided by NASA
Andromeda is 250,000 light-years in diameter and contains regarding a trillion stars. Compared to the Milky Way, which is 100,000 light-years in diameter and has 200 to 400 billion stars, Andromeda is a very large galaxy.
Scientists estimate that there are at least 36 celestial bodies with intelligent life in our galaxy alone, so they believe that more intelligent life may exist in Andromeda.
Andromeda is currently rushing toward our galaxy at 400,000 kilometers per hour. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) calculated that in 4 billion years, Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide and merge into one giant galaxy.
If the Milky Way and Andromeda collide, the stars and planets within them will also collide, so it seems like something huge will happen, but you don’t have to worry regarding that.
NASA predicted, “Even if galaxies collide, the sun and Earth will be safe because the stars and planets will not collide with each other because the distance between stars is large,” and “Andromeda’s star will not collide directly with our sun.”
1703542619
#Andromeda #Galaxy #broadens #earthlings #view #universe김정욱의 #별별이야기59 #Seoul #Economic #Daily
