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Article: A new neighbour in our cosmic backyard
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- November 29, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Look above the straggly line of stars making up the
constellation of Andromeda - which our ancestors imagined as a
naked princess lashed to a rock - and you will spot a fuzzy patch.
It looks as unsensational as the faint stars that make up Andromeda
itself. But this misty blur is a city of stars far larger than our
Milky Way, the Galaxy we call home.
The Andromeda galaxy contains 400 billion stars, but because it
lies 2 1/4 million light years away - that is, more than 21 million
million million kilometres - it is dimmed to the point of being
almost invisible. Yet it is one of the closest galaxies to our own,
and one of the few visible to the unaided eye. Just below the
constellation of ...