The closest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, which is around 2.6 million light years away from us. Many galaxies are more than 100,000 light years across in distance. It takes over two hundred million years for the sun to orbit the center of the galaxy. This is called a galactic year.
Galaxy Facts: Interesting Facts about Near and Distant Galaxies
Type Of Galaxies Facts
13.61 billion years Milky Way/Age Astronomers believe the Milky Way is about 13.6 billion years old — only 200 million years younger than the universe. The galaxy's evolution began when clouds of gas and dust started collapsing, pushed together by gravity.
Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies. They were first discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and were originally classified as a single irregular galaxy because of their odd shape.
10 Facts about the Milky Way
All in all, Hubble reveals an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe or so, but this number is likely to increase to about 200 billion as telescope technology in space improves, Livio told Space.com.
“Virtually all galaxies rotate, and this rotation is fundamental to how galaxies form. For example, most galaxies are in flat rotating disks, like our Milky Way. Our result is helping us to understand how that galactic rotation builds up across cosmic time.”
Four billion years from now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with our large spiraled neighbor, Andromeda. The galaxies as we know them will not survive. In fact, our solar system is going to outlive our galaxy.