Astronomy Picture of the Day
Image Credit:
NASA,
ESA,
Hubble
Mission,
B. F. Williams (Univ Washington),
Z. Chen (Univ Washington),
L. C. Johnson (Northwestern),
Processing; Joseph DePasquale
(STScI)
Explanation:
The largest photomosaic
ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope
image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral
Andromeda Galaxy.
With 600 overlapping frames assembled from observations made
from July 2010 to December 2022, the full
Hubble Andromeda Galaxy mosaic
spans almost six full moons across
planet Earth's sky.
A cropped version shown above is
nearly two full moons across and partially covers Andromeda's core
and inner spiral arms.
Also known as M31, the
Andromeda Galaxy is
2.5 million light-years away.
That makes it the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way.
Our perspective on the spiral Milky Way is
anchored to the view from the
location of the Sun,
a star found within the Milky Way's galactic disk.
But Hubble's magnificent Andromeda mosaic offers an expansive
view of a large spiral galaxy from the outside looking in.
Hubble's comprehensive,
detailed
data set
extending
across the Andromeda Galaxy
will allow astronomers to make an
unprecedented holistic exploration of the
mysteries of spiral galaxy structure and evolution.