Galaxies space and the universe, a look beyond our world

The vastness of space is almost impossible for us to comprehend, this page is intended to take a wider look at our Galaxies and others.

The thoughts of an astronaut

Buzz Aldrin wrote after his walk on the moon on July 21, 1969

"There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost certain that there is life somewhere in space."

Looking in from the edge

If it were possible to stand on the edge and look in at all the Galaxy's we would see one galaxy called the Milky Way

This contains our very own solar system, it is part of a Local Galactic Group that contains more than 54 galaxies and as well as our Milky Way (The second-largest galaxy) Is the largest galaxy Andromeda these two are the most massive galaxies by far in the Local Galactic Group
The giant in our group

Andromeda is massively bigger than the Milky Way and contains 1 trillion stars possible more; 5 times as many stars as the Milky Way.

Although it is approximately 2,500,000 light-years and that is a very long way away, just think if there was another form of life in andromeda it would take them over 2 million years to travel to Earth, but why anyone would come here I have not the faintest idea The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest spiral galaxy to our own (The milky way). Remember a galaxy isn't an individual object, it’s a group of stars

Dwarfs and Giants

Of the two types of galaxies, we have the dwarf galaxies and the larger ones are called spiral which includes Andromeda, there are even larger galaxies, but we won’t go into that. Now for a bit of trivia that I am sure you would like to have tucked into your trivia box

Andromeda was named after Princess Andromeda, from Greek mythology, the poor Princess was punished for her mother's bragging, she was chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster

But don’t worry in the end she was saved by Perseus who later was to become her husband, and it is said, that this story was later converted to the legend of St. George and the Dragon, anyway enough of this fantasy story back to Andromeda.

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Just look up and you will find

To find Andromeda, first find the constellation of Ursa Major (Great Bear) in England we call it the plough in the states it is called the big dipper.


Andromeda is the cloudy mass close nearby, there was even a film made in honour of Andromeda called the Andromeda Strain it is about a satellite returning to Earth containing a virus, killing a complete village, but just like The Greek Prince it had a happy ending