Local Group of Galaxies

The Milky Way Galaxy belongs to a small group of galaxies of which the Andromeda Galaxy (shown here) is the largest member. The Milky Way is next in size, followed by the spiral galaxy in Triangulum, (known as M33) and the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is near our Galaxy. The other galaxies in the Local Group are small elliptical, irregular and dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

The Local Group is about 6 million light-years across.

By examining the cosmic background radiation it has been shown that the local group is traveling in the direction of the constellation Hydra with a speed of 600 km per second (1.34 million miles per hour!).