Andromeda Galaxy Andromeda Galaxy The Andromeda Galaxy (), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years) from Earth, and the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. Its name stems from the area of the sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda. The 2006 observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that the Andromeda Galaxy contains approximately one trillion stars, more than twice the number of the Milky Way's estimated 200 to 400 billion stars. The Andromeda Galaxy's mass is estimated to be around 1.76 times that of the
The Galaxy Being introduction and epilogue narration heard from "The Control Voice" was performed by veteran radio, screen and TV actor, Vic Perrin. Booker observes that the engineer and the Galaxy Being are variations of the television and science fiction tropes of the mad scientist and the invading alien, albeit with a reversal typical of "The Outer Limits" that both the scientist and the alien are benevolent, and it is the ordinary human beings of Earth who are the villains in the story. The story itself dramatized the coverage in popular media of the time of speculation as to whether other planets could