The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to take a 1.5 billion pixel figure of speech of the Andromeda Galaxy .
you’re able to see an overview of the image below , but that does n’t do the full image justice . Most monitor display less than twomillion pixels , so when you look at the whole effigy you are probably losing almost 99.9 % of the resolve .
To take full vantage of the exertion NASA and the European Space Agency have put into creating this image , you demand to go to theHubble sitewhere it is possible to zoom along into patches of the galaxy , seeing the sinful detail come to animation every prison term you tick . What may have seemed like a exclusive ace is revealed as a dense cluster or a giant surrounded by hundreds of others too faint to make out in the wider prospect .
Credit NASA / ESA
Also roll in the hay as Messier 31 , or M31 , theAndromeda Galaxyis the only appendage of theLocal Groupof galaxies that hasmore good deal than our own Milky Way . More than 100 million of itsestimated trillion starsare seeable in this image , provided you go deep enough .
Most of Andromeda ’s stars are simply too faint to be seen at this distance , even with a telescope as powerful as Hubble . However , the range also does n’t take in the full breadth of this mighty galaxy . The part photographed is 40,000 loose - geezerhood across , but present only one side of the galaxy , since the left helping hand end only just captures the galactic center . The outermost regions have also been excluded with the galaxy ’s full diameter estimated at3 - 5 time this size of it .
While the effort may plunge a thousand screensavers and paries posting , it is more than good PR for the space programme . ThePanchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury(PHAT ) projection imaged Andromeda from near - UV wavelength to the near - infrared , with both red and blue filters . This level of detail across such a cooking stove will be used to test theory about the structure of spiral galaxies , and construe results for more remote spirals .
H / TCosmos
