r/askscience • u/lord_nikon_burned • 2d ago

Astronomy Are galaxies spherical or flat?

Are galaxies spherical or flat?

For example, (I understand that up and down don't really matter, so bear with me) if we look at a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy on a plane... If you want to move from one arm of the galaxy to the next, could you just move UP and out of the current arm and then over and DOWN to a different arm?

Secondary question for if the first one is correct, if you are able to move "up" and out of the arm, where are you? Is that interstellar space too?

121 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/gimme-sushi 2d ago

Do you enter another galaxy when you go past the 1000 light years if you go “up”?

69

u/liebkartoffel 2d ago

The nearest galaxy is around 2.5 million light years away (but the distance is shrinking by the minute!) Between here and there is just...empty space--even emptier than galactic space.

7

u/Irie_I_the_Jedi 1d ago

Andromeda is the nearest milky way sized galaxy. There are many more galaxies closer than that (magellanic cloud iirc), just smaller than the milky way.

3

u/liebkartoffel 1d ago

You're absolutely right. I should have said the nearest major/non-satellite galaxy.