Astronomers are still struggling to get an accurate count, but our galaxy also appears to have roughly a quarter to a half as many stars as Andromeda.Īncient skygazers have probably pondered the nature of this blurry spot for many thousands of years. That’s significantly bigger than the Milky Way, which more recent estimates suggest is 150,000 light-years across (though the exact boundary of where either of these galaxies 'end' is a bit nebulous). And it stretches more than 200,000 light-years in diameter. That makes it the most distant object regularly visible with the naked eye.īy some estimates, the Andromeda Galaxy contains roughly one trillion stars. The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is the nearest large neighbor of our Milky Way, though it sits some 2.5 million light-years away.
If you look toward the constellation Andromeda on a clear night far from city lights, you can barely make out a long, fuzzy blob called the Andromeda Galaxy.
