Hubble svela i dettagli della galassia di Andromeda
This is the largest photomosaic ever made by the Hubble Space Telescope. The target is the vast Andromeda galaxy that is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, making it the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is seen almost edge-on, tilted by 77 degrees relative to Earth’s view. The galaxy is so large that the mosaic is assembled from approximately 600 separate fields of view taken over 10 years of Hubble observing. The mosaic image is made up of at least 2.5 billion pixels. Hubble resolves an estimated 200 million stars that are hotter than our sun, but still a fraction of the galaxy’s total estimated stellar population. Interesting regions include: Clusters of bright blue stars embedded within the galaxy, background galaxies seen much farther away, and photo-bombing by a couple bright foreground stars that are actually inside our Milky Way; NGC 206 the most conspicuous star cloud in Andromeda; A young cluster of blue newborn stars; The satellite galaxy M32, that may be the residual core of a galaxy that once collided with Andromeda; Dark dust lanes across myriad stars. [Image description: The Andromeda galaxy is shown at the top of the visual. It is a spiral galaxy that spreads across the image. It is tilted nearly edge-on to our line of sight so that it appears very oval. The borders of the galaxy are jagged because the image is a mosaic of smaller, square images against a black background. The outer edges of the galaxy are blue, while the inner two-thirds is yellowish with a bright, central core. Five callout squares highlight interesting features of the galaxy]