BREAKING NEWS: Andromeda's Vast Starry Disk

Andromeda's Vast Starry Disk

By Ken Croswell, author of The Alchemy of the Heavens

***EXCLUSIVE***

An enormous disk of stars surrounds the Andromeda Galaxy's bright disk, say
astronomers in Europe, the United States, and Australia. The newfound
stellar disk spans at least 260,000 light-years, almost twice the size of
the bright disk seen in photographs, and emits nearly 10 percent of the
galaxy's total light. Andromeda may have stripped these stars from smaller
galaxies that strayed too close.

"It's obviously an important discovery," says Sidney van den Bergh at the
Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, who is an
expert on the Local Group but was not affiliated with the discovery team. "I
have no doubts about the validity of the work." Because of the new disk's
high luminosity and large angular momentum, van den Bergh says it must have
represented a major event in the life of Andromeda.

If the newly discovered disk were visible to the naked eye, the Andromeda
Galaxy's major axis would appear more than eleven times larger than the
diameter of the Full Moon.

The story is at http://KenCroswell.com/AndromedaDisk.html

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