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The Fate of the Milky Way–Andromeda System: To Merge or Not?

  • Authors: Hao Wu, Yang Huang, Huawei Zhang, Guangze Sun, Shi Shao

Hao Wu et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1001 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 1.

Comparison of the literature measurements of the M31 transverse velocity. The black inverted triangle indicates a purely radial orbit of M31 relative to the MW. The magenta symbol shows the result of H. Wu et al. (2025) based on Gaia stars with five-parameter (5p) astrometric solutions. The yellow symbol denotes the HST measurement from R. P. van der Marel et al. (2012a), while the olive symbol shows the value obtained after combining it with the earlier satellite-based estimate of R. P. van der Marel & P. Guhathakurta (2008). Blue and red squares show the blue- and red-subsample results of J. B. Salomon et al. (2021), with the blue value adopted by S25. Light-blue and dark-red triangles indicate the corresponding results of S. Rusterucci et al. (2024). The black star marks the earlier Gaia DR2 estimate from R. P. van der Marel et al. (2019).

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