The "right answer" was wrong

Last night on "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" they asked a guy to name the galaxy closest to ours. He said "Andromeda," meaning M31.

He guessed right- that was the answer Jeff Foxworthy had- but both of them were wrong. The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest galaxy of comparable size to ours. But it's actually the 33rd closest galaxy.

The closest galaxy is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (pictured at the left), which is only 25,000 light years away, as opposed to 2.5 million light years for the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Virgo Stellar Stream- 30,000 ly away and discovered in 2005- was thought to be the closest galaxy before the recent discovery of the one in Canis Major. The Sagittarius Elliptical Dwarf Galaxy (81,000 ly away) and the Larger Magellenic Cloud (168.000 ly away) were each, for a time, thought to be the closest galaxy.

But it's surprising how sloppy even astronomically knowledgable people and sites can be about the distinction between the galaxy nearest to ours and the major galaxy nearest to ours. So maybe "Fifth Grader" shouldn't be blamed quite as much for this particular howler.

For that matter, before I researched it this morning, I still thought the closest galaxy was the Larger Magellanic Cloud!