Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2015

SPACE CHRONICLES T he NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as Messier 31. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake- shaped disc stretching across over 40000 light-years. This sweeping view shows one third of our galactic neighbour, the An- dromeda Galaxy, with stunning clar- ity. The panoramic image has a stag- gering 1.5 billion pixels — meaning you would need more than 600 HD Hubble catches the sharpest ever view of the Andromeda galaxy by NASA T his video pans over NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observa- tions of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31. [NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton (University of Wa- shington, USA), B. F. Williams (Univer- sity of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler.] T his image, captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31. This is a cropped version of the full image and has 1.5 billion pixels. You would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image. This image is too large to be easily display- ed at full resolution and is best ap- preciated using the zoom tool. [NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton (University of Washington, USA), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler] skirts of its outer disc on the right. The large groups of blue stars in the galaxy indicate the locations of star clusters and star-forming re- gions in the spiral arms, whilst the dark silhouettes of obscured re- gions trace out complex dust struc- tures. Underlying the entire galaxy is a smooth distribution of cooler red stars that trace Andromeda's evolution over billions of years. television screens to display the whole image. The image featured here has 69536 × 22230 pixels and is a cropped version of the full uncrop- ped image which has 3.9 billion pix- els and covers a length of almost 60000 light years. It traces the gal- axy from its central galactic bulge on the left, where stars are densely packed together, across lanes of stars and dust to the sparser out-