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                           Astronomy Picture of the Day   
      
       Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our   
         fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation   
                       written by a professional astronomer.   
      
                                    2022 June 6   
      
             Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending   
        Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI); T.   
                             Hallas; and A. Mellinger   
      
      Explanation: Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger   
      neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of   
      slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on   
      recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31   
      could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home   
      galaxy. Still, the errors in sideways velocity appear sufficiently   
      large to admit a good chance that the central parts of the two galaxies   
      will miss, slightly, but will become close enough for their outer halos   
      to become gravitationally entangled. Once that happens, the two   
      galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to   
      become one large elliptical galaxy -- over the next few billion years.   
      Pictured here is a combination of images depicting the sky of a world   
      (Earth?) in the distant future when the outer parts of each galaxy   
      begin to collide. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire   
      surrounding Local Group of Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic   
      of research for years to come.   
      
                       Tomorrow's picture: altar of dragons   
        __________________________________________________________________   
      
          Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)   
               NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.   
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                         A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC   
                                & Michigan Tech. U.   
      
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