Depth 49 · Spiral galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, a spiral of roughly a trillion stars. It is bright enough to see without a telescope, and about a century ago it became the object that showed astronomers other galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way.

Fact sheet

Type: Spiral galaxy
Distance: About 2.5 million light-years from Earth
Size: About 152,000 light-years across (estimates range up to about 220,000)
Constellation: Andromeda
Position in the sky: Right ascension 0h 43m, declination +41° 16′
Seeing it from Earth: It can be seen with the naked eye from a dark site, and even under moderate light pollution, as a soft oval glow; for northern observers it is best on autumn evenings, with NASA naming November as the best month.
On the voyage: Depth 49, in the Galactic core and beyond section of the route, the last charted landmark, after the Large Magellanic Cloud

Things to know

No one knows who first noticed it because it is visible without a telescope, but the earliest surviving record is in the Persian astronomer al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars from 964. NASA
About a century ago Edwin Hubble showed that this 'spiral nebula' lies far outside the Milky Way, proving it is a separate galaxy. ESA/Hubble
Hubble's 2025 panorama of Andromeda, stitched from about 600 separate fields, has at least 2.5 billion pixels and shows more than 200 million stars, out of an estimated trillion in the galaxy. ESA/Hubble
Andromeda is approaching the Milky Way at about 400,000 km/h (250,000 mph), and a 2012 NASA analysis predicted the two galaxies would collide in about 4 billion years. NASA
A study published in 2025 that included newer data concluded there is only about a 50% chance that the Milky Way and Andromeda merge within the next 10 billion years. arXiv

Sources

Reach depth 49 on a voyage to fly past the Andromeda Galaxy yourself. Every right answer warps your ship one stop deeper.

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