NEW YORK: Based on data collected from NASA Hubble space telescope, scientists have concluded that the levels of cosmic gas in outer space are a lot more than initially recorded. The Andromeda galaxy is over 2 million light years away and covers the moon’s diameter by over five times.
Using data of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the dark, nearly invisible halo was calculated to be about six times larger and 1,000 times more massive than previously measured. The halo stretches about a million light-years from its host galaxy and halfway to our own Milky Way galaxy.
“Halos are the gaseous atmospheres of galaxies. The properties of these gaseous halos control the rate at which stars form in galaxies according to models of galaxy formation,” Nicolas Lehner, the lead investigator on the project from the University of Notre Dame, said.
The gargantuan halo is estimated to contain half the mass of the stars in the Andromeda galaxy itself, in the form of a hot, diffuse gas. If it could be viewed with the naked eye, the halo would be 100 times the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth – equivalent to the patch of sky covered by two basketballs held at arm’s length.
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