Looks can be deceiving. The Andromeda spiral, the nearest major galaxy to our Milky Way, can be seen as a small, fuzzy, spindle-shaped object in the autumn skies of the Northern Hemisphere. What can’t be seen because it is too faint is a vast halo of hot, rarified gas that would stretch out from the Andromeda galaxy to the width of three Big Dippers. Now, in the most comprehensive study of the monstrous halo, Hubble astronomers have mapped this tenuous plasma, finding that it has a layered structure, with two distinct, nested shells of gas. They also found that it extends 1.3 million light-years from Andromeda—about halfway to our Milky Way—and as far as 2 million light-years in some directions. This reservoir of gas is full of clues to Andromeda’s past and future, and may offer insight into the evolution of our own Milky Way galaxy.

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