Researchers Discover A Halo of Gas Surrounding Andromeda Galaxy Through Hubble

Researchers have found massive halo of gas surrounding Andromeda galaxy that stretches a full million light-years outside the galaxy, according to a new research.

Researchers said that the huge invisible ring of gas has as much mass as half the stars in the entire galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a massive and is 25 percent larger than our own Milky Way. Researchers estimate that the galaxy contains a trillion stars compared to Milky Way

The ring was discovered with the help Hubble Telescope from NASA, and according to researchers the ring is about 100 times the diameter of the moon.

"That is the $1-million question," one Andromeda and its heft halo would help answer, said Dr. Nicolas Lehner, an astronomer at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Lehner is the lead author of a paper describing the results.

To spot this invisible ring, astronomers had to use the bright light of objects in the background - such as quasars, which are bright bursts of energy that come from matter falling into supermassive black holes and being spewed back out - that interact with the gas, allowing scientists to measure it, State Column noted.

The research will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.