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M31, The Great Andromeda Galaxy resides in the northern part of the fall constellation of Andromeda - The Princess. It is easily visible to the unaided eye from even a moderately dark sky site, therefor one of the most well known deep sky objects. It is an amazing fact that it can be seen unaided considering it's distance of almost 3 million Light Years. There are 6 TRILLION miles in one Light Year. So distance of The Andromeda Galaxy in miles = 2,900,000Light Years X 6,000,000,000,000 = 17,400,000,000,000,000,000 Miles. Astronomically speaking this is not overly distant but when you consider that M31 is visible without binoculars or a telescope, it's truly astonishing. M31 is part of a cluster of Galaxies known as The Local Group. The Local Group spans around 5 million Light years and is made up of around 40 galaxies which include M31, M33 , the large and small Magellinic Clouds, our own Milky Way and others. The Local Group and around 160 other Galaxy Clusters in turn are part of a very large group of Galaxies known as The Virgo Supercluster which spans around 100 million Light Years. It can be seen from this that M31 is actually a very close neighbor. M31 is sometimes referred to as our sister galaxy. Visible in this photo two Companion Dwarf Galaxies M32 (Class: Dwarf E2) at the 10 o'clock position from M31's nucleus and M110 (Class: Dwarf E5) at the 5 o'clock position which are roughly equivalent to our Milky Way's Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, our own Companion Galaxies. So they make a kind of mirror set. Our Milky Way and The Andromeda do constitute a binary pair. They are orbiting each other and linked gravitationally. In around 6 billion years scientists think they may collide, or at least experience a close encounter. It is coming tward us at about 75 miles/second.
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