According to the latest research, our Milky Way galaxy has a mass equal to about 800 billion suns. The new measurements also show that there is a 95 percent chance our galaxy is smaller than the one closest to us, known as the Andromeda galaxy.
According to the latest research, our Milky Way galaxy has a mass equal to about 800 billion suns.
The new measurements also show that there is a 95 percent chance our galaxy is smaller than the one closest to us, known as the Andromeda galaxy.
Other studies have shown that the Milky Way is more massive, but this is the first study to compare the two galaxies at the same time.
The study was led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, working with experts from several international institutes including the University of British Columbia, Carnegie Mellon University, and NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics amongst others.
Matthew Walker, one of the authors of the study from Carnegie Mellon University, is quoted as saying: "By studying two massive galaxies that are close to each other and the galaxies that surround them, we can take what we know about gravity and pair that with what we know about expansion to get an accurate account of the mass contained in each galaxy."
In order to measure the masses of the two galaxies, they had to account for the invisible dark matter that exists in both of the galaxy’s outer regions.
