News We're colliding with the Sagittarius galaxy!

[Marcel]

This may be old news to most of you, but I just found out about it, and I tend to keep up on this kind of thing. I first discovered it on a site with erroneous info. It lead me here to the real stuff.

http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/

Aside from the general "wow!" factor of expanding my view of the neighborhood, I'm intrigued by the notion that the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy is composed largely of old yellow stars. I'm particularly fond of Old Yeller, or Sol as he's known around these parts, because yellow stars have a long stable life. I think these stars raining down on the plane of our galaxy all around us are a good place to look for civilizations. I like the idea that our first contact with intelligent life may be from another galaxy!

 

[MJR]

I thought it was Andromeda.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I thought it was Andromeda.

Who says we are limited to colliding with one galaxy?

 

[MJR]

Who says we are limited to colliding with one galaxy?

True, but which one is first.

 

[Linguofreak]

We are already in the process of colliding with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The collision w/ Andromeda is still aways off.

The exciting thing about the collision w/ Andromeda is that it's larger than we are. The Sagittarius dwarf is smaller.

 

[Eccentrus]

Hasn't our galaxy collided several times with other big ones? Otherwise, there won't be satellite galaxies around it. After the collision with Andromeda the resulting galaxy will be a super huge one, could be the largest one around in billions of light years.

 

[Ark]

Hasn't our galaxy collided several times with other big ones? Otherwise, there won't be satellite galaxies around it. After the collision with Andromeda the resulting galaxy will be a super huge one, could be the largest one around in billions of light years.

....

WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

 

[Linguofreak]

Hasn't our galaxy collided several times with other big ones? Otherwise, there won't be satellite galaxies around it. After the collision with Andromeda the resulting galaxy will be a super huge one, could be the largest one around in billions of light years.

No, collisions between large galaxies lead to the merger of the two galaxies involved into a giant elliptical galaxy. Since the Milky Way is not elliptical, we know that it has not collided with any other galaxies of similar size.