Stop hanging your head down in shame, Milky Way as big as Andromeda!

Data Uncover Bigger Galaxy in Cosmos, and It’s Ours - NYTimes.com
"It turns out that Andromeda, previously thought to be the biggest
galaxy in this part of the universe, may not have bragging rights over
the Milky Way after all.

Astronomers said Monday that the Milky Way is more massive than earlier
known, given new measurements showing that the Sun is moving at 600,000
miles per hour around the center of the galaxy, or 100,000 m.p.h. faster
than past calculations suggested.

The higher speed of the Sun means the galaxy must have more mass — about
50 percent more — so as to generate a stronger gravitational pull to
keep hold of the Sun, as well as all its other stars. That expands the
Milky Way to roughly the heft of Andromeda.

“We thought we were like a little sister of Andromeda,” said a member of
the research team, Mark J. Reid, an astronomer at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Now we’re like fraternal
twins.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/sc...ml?ref=science