NASA The Andromeda Galaxy is so close, sometimes we mistake it for our own. Andromeda—or Messier 31, as it's known scientifically—is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. It’s also, like the Milky Way, a spiral, so textbooks sometimes use it to represent for the Milky Way in explanations. We can’t see our own galaxy from far away, but Andromeda is probably what it looks like.