NASA has shared the largest-ever image assembled of the Andromeda galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope. Captured seven years ago, it is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbour.
“This cropped view shows a 48,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy in its natural visible-light color,” NASA said of the image in 2015. Over 100 million stars are visible in this sweeping view of the Andromeda galaxy.
2.5 million light-years is a relatively short distance in terms of the universe, which makes Andromeda “a much bigger target in the sky than the myriad galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away.”
“his means that the Hubble survey is assembled together into a mosaic image using 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings,” NASA explained.
The panoramic image is divided into three parts in NASA’s Instagram post, with the last part showing stars bunched up in the blue ring-like feature.
Andromeda is similar in shape and size to the Milky Way, and NASA hopes that studying it will help us learn more about our own galaxy.
“NASA is exploring our solar system and beyond to understand the universe and our place in it. We seek to unravel the secrets of our universe, its origins and evolution, and search for life among the stars,” the American space agency said in a statement when the image was first released.
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