NASA's Hubble Space Telescope maps the giant halo of gas enveloping our nearest galactic neighbour the Andromeda galaxy for the first time

(DailyMail)

• Astronomers looked at the light from background quasars to study the halo
• They found the halo stretches out 1.3 million light years towards the Milky Way
• The halo includes heavy elements ejected by stars exploding in a supernova

A giant halo of gas that surrounds the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbour - the Andromeda galaxy - has been mapped by NASA's Hubble Telescope for the first time.

Astronomers from Yale University used instruments on Hubble to study the scale of the galactic shell and found it stretches 1.3 million light-years from Andromeda. 

As a result of the research, astronomers now believe Andromeda's halo of gas is 'bumping into' the gas halo that surrounds our own Milky Way galaxy. 

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