Andromeda & Milky Way started colliding

 

2020 has become the year to be remembered as not only the year of COVID19 pandemic but the year in which we have got evidence of one of the largest and longest celestial activities in our galactic neighborhood.

NASA's Hubble Telescope has recently revealed that the Andromeda has made the first contact with our galaxy, the Milky Way (which contains the Solar System and Earth), by its Halo, which can be marked as the beginning of the great galactic collision of the two largest galaxies in the local group. 

What is a Galactic Halo? 

Halo can be considered as a complex dynamic luminous bubble of gases, charged particles, and materials involved in star formation extending millions of light-years around the parent galaxy. Optical Halos can also be seen within the atmosphere of Earth produced by the refraction of sunlight by clouds containing ice crystals etc.. Andromeda has a diameter of 220.000 light-years twice that of our Milky Way and its Halo stretches up to 2 million light-years. 

Hubble telescope observed these optical dynamics of Halo which shows that the Halo of Andromeda and the Milky Way are in a collision and both galaxies are pressing each other.

The collision is destined to occur completely, as predicted by scientists, in about 4.5 billion years will result in the formation of Milkomeda or Milkdromeda. It is too early to say whether humans will be there to observe this collision completely or not, even if we settle to any other planet in another Solar System. 

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