Is this information correct - Milky Way to Andromeda

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

Hello all,
I was reading a very cool book on Astronomy (Astronomy, created by Basher written by Dan Green) to my four year old son Flinders and came across this written fact -
Andromeda is 20 Milky Way widths away.
I know the distances are huge but that feels close!
Love the book for the young ones!

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by Matt Wastell

Hello all,
I was reading a very cool book on Astronomy (Astronomy, created by Basher written by Dan Green) to my four year old son Flinders and came across this written fact -
Andromeda is 20 Milky Way widths away.
I know the distances are huge but that feels close!
Love the book for the young ones!

The milky Way is aprox 100.000 light years wide, and the distance to Andromeda galaxy is about Two Million odd Light Years away, so Yes it is about Twenty Milky Way Widths away ..
Cheers

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Originally Posted by astroron

The milky Way is aprox 100.000 light years wide, and the distance to Andromeda galaxy is about Two Million odd Light Years away, so Yes it is about Twenty Milky Widths away ..
Cheers

Sounds like some kind of Chocolate Treat

[mplanet62 (Michael)]

Yep, that's what I would call tyranny of the distance!

[RobF (Rob)]

Wow, I find that quite amazing too. No way would I have expected that. Just goes to show how big our galaxy is. They are supposed to be colliding too I guess.

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Comparatively speaking, it is "closer" to us than the Moon (which is about 30 Earth diameters away).

[omegacrux (David)]

A similar scale model is two cd's two metres apart !

[RobF (Rob)]

Cool.
I'd be interested to hear the distance for other DSOs scaled in this manner

[Baddad (Marty)]

The distance from the Earth to the Sun, 106 Sun diameters. (864,000 miles and 92,000,000) {variable from 91-95million}

Or 11,607 Earth diameters.

http://www.universetoday.com/94252/c...cs-of-the-sun/

Cheers

[AstralTraveller (David)]

That is closer than I thought.

BTW I walk about 4450 David diameters to work each day, or 1100 David lengths. I had never thought about it that way - it had always just been too far (and too often).

[Baddad (Marty)]

Hi David,


Cheers

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

See - we are close!

Originally Posted by omegacrux

A similar scale model is two cd's two metres apart !