{"id":41775,"date":"2025-01-22T20:20:46","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T20:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/check-out-the-hubble-space-telescopes-stunning-new-view-of-the-andromeda-galaxy\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T20:20:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T20:20:46","slug":"check-out-the-hubble-space-telescopes-stunning-new-view-of-the-andromeda-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=41775","title":{"rendered":"Check Out the Hubble Space Telescope’s Stunning New View of the Andromeda Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Margherita Bassi<\/a><\/p>\n

Daily Correspondent<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

NASA\u2019s Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope has just released the most comprehensive astronomical survey of Andromeda, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way. The resulting colossal image was stitched together from 600 different fields of view, is made of at least 2.5 billion pixels and took more than a decade to create.<\/p>\n

Presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society and published in The Astrophysical Journal<\/em><\/a><\/em>, the new \u201cphotomosaic\u201d also sheds light on our neighboring galaxy\u2019s evolutionary history.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of Hubble\u2019s lasting achievements will be how it showed the public the wonders of the universe,\u201d Kenneth Sembach<\/a>, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, told National Geographic<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Daniel Stone in 2020. His remark holds true now, nearly half a decade later.<\/p>\n

At 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy<\/a>\u2014officially called Messier 31\u2014is the farthest object visible to the naked eye. It appears as a fuzzy cigar shape in the sky on clear and dark nights.<\/p>\n

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Hubble’s recent photomosaic of the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.<\/p>\n

NASA, ESA, B. Williams (University of Washington), ESA Standard Licence<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The photographic mosaic<\/a> was achieved thanks to the efforts of two Hubble programs that spanned more than ten years and over 1,000 orbits around Earth. The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury captured the northern half of the galaxy, while the following Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Southern Treasury imaged the southern half. The final image displays the galaxy tilted at a 77-degree angle relative to how we see it from Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Hubble, we can get into enormous detail about what\u2019s happening on a holistic scale across the entire disk of the [Andromeda] galaxy. You can\u2019t do that with any other large galaxy,\u201d Benjamin Williams<\/a>, an astronomer at the University of Washington and principal investigator for the project, says in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Hubble\u2019s annotated panoramic view of the Andromeda Galaxy.<\/p>\n

NASA, ESA, B. Williams (U. of Washington), ESA Standard Licence<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, the image could reveal clues about Andromeda\u2019s history, which might include past mergers of galaxies<\/a> and close galactic encounters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndromeda\u2019s a train wreck. It looks like it has been through some kind of event that caused it to form a lot of stars and then just shut down,\u201d Daniel Weisz<\/a>, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, says in a statement<\/a> from NASA. \u201cThis was probably due to a collision with another galaxy in the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis detailed look at the resolved stars will help us to piece together the galaxy\u2019s past merger and interaction history,\u201d Williams adds.<\/p>\n

Hubble, however, has its limits\u2014the space telescope can only detect stars brighter than our sun. In the image of Andromeda, it pinpointed more than 200 million stars\u2014but that\u2019s still much less than the one trillion stars that astronomers suggest make up the galaxy\u2019s stellar population.<\/p>\n

Still, observation of Andromeda has come a long way. Roughly 100 years ago, our neighboring spiral galaxy was discovered by American astronomer Edwin Hubble<\/a>. Previously, scientists thought the entire universe existed within the Milky Way, per the NASA statement. But when Andromeda proved to be its very own galaxy, astronomers realized the universe was much, much larger than they\u2019d anticipated.<\/p>\n

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2.5 Billion Pixel Image of Galaxy Shot by Hubble<\/p>\n

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