Year of the Comet
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)

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Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

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Web Extras

The birth of Milkomeda

Watch for the equivalent of 5 billion years as the merger of the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy results in the birth of a single elliptical galaxy: Milkomeda.
Published: April 23, 2008
Over the next 5 billion years, our home galaxy will merge with the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxies will interact through several near-misses, drawing out long tidal "tails" of material that could cause our Sun to jump ship and join Andromeda before the final merger. This video sequence is based on actual computer simulations by astronomers T.J. Cox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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