BIA - Banco de Imágenes Astronómicas

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is located only 2.3 million light years away, making it the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way. M31 is part of the Local group of galaxies, of which our own Milky Way is a member, and can be seen with the naked eye as a flat cloud the width of the full moon in the constellation Andromeda. Like the Milky Way, M31 is a giant spiral galaxy. In this photograph we can also see M31?s two brightest companions, the elliptical galaxies M32 (to the left of M31?s disk in the image) and M110 (to the right of the image).