Move Over Andromeda, meet The Milky Way

[leinad (Dan)]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene..._trillion_suns

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...-more-weighty/

[renormalised (Carl)]

Actually, we're heavier than M31...still...but not as large linearly. M31's estimated mass is still 1.23 trillion solar masses, if I remember correctly. So, if our new mass is 3 trillion, M31 is less than half our weight. It's like comparing Betelgeuse and eta Carina. Betelgeuse is 2.5 times the size of eta, but only 0.2 times as massive. We're smaller, but denser than M31. We also produce more stars per year than M31....3-4 solar mass/year c.f. 1 solar mass/year.

[allan gould]

Thanks for that. Very interesting

[interstellar]

If I remember we are heading in that general direction, towards M31. And at a good clip of speed.

[jungle11 (Greg)]

Sorry havent read the links yet but i heard about this on BBC science, I think our 'interaction' with M31 has been brought up the timeline because of this. We have a higher velocity than previously thought.

[glenc (Glen)]

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/37151649.html
Because Andromeda has more stars than the Milky Way, astronomers have generally assumed that it was about 50 percent more massive. But this new result agrees with a study published two years ago by Mark Wilkinson (Cambridge University, England) and his colleagues. By studying the motions of satellite dwarf galaxies and globular clusters, they found that the Milky Way is at least as massive, and maybe more so, than Andromeda.
“We should no longer think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Local Group of galaxies,” says Reid. “The two galaxies are basically fraternal twins — equal in mass.”