Andrómeda in HD. Hubble captures the sharpest ever view of neighbouring spiral Galaxy

The 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 40 000 light-years.

This sweeping view shows one third of our galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, with stunning clarity. The panoramic image has a staggering 1.5 billion pixels — meaning you would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image [1]. It traces the galaxy from its central galactic bulge on the left, where stars are densely packed together, across lanes of stars and dust to the sparser outskirts 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 regions in the spiral arms, whilst the dark silhouettes of obscured regions trace out complex dust structures. Underlying the entire galaxy is a smooth distribution of cooler red stars that trace Andromeda's evolution over billions of years.
The Andromeda Galaxy is a large spiral galaxy — a galaxy type home to the majority of the stars in the Universe — and this detailed view, which captures over 100 million stars, represents a new benchmark for precision studies of this galaxy type [2]. The clarity of these observations will help astronomers to interpret the light from the many galaxies that have a similar structure but lie much further away.
Because the Andromeda Galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth it is a much bigger target on the sky than the galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away. In fact its full diameter on the night sky is six times that of the full Moon. To capture the large portion of the galaxy seen here — over 40 000 light-years across — Hubble took 411 images which have been assembled into a mosaic image.
This panorama is the product of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury
(PHAT) programme. Images were obtained from viewing the galaxy in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths, using the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble. This view shows the galaxy in its natural visible-light colour as photographed in red and blue filters.
This image is too large to be easily displayed at full resolution and is best appreciated using the zoom tool.
The image was presented today at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Notes

[1] The image featured here has 69 536 x 22 230 pixels and is a cropped version of the full uncropped image which has 3.9 billion pixels and covers a length of almost 60 000 light years.
[2] The whole galaxy contains over one thousand billion stars.

The area around the Andromeda Galaxy (ground-based image)

This image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the area around the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 (Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin)

Wide-field view of the Andromeda Galaxy showing the extent of the PHAT survey

This wide-field view shows the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) along with its companions M32 (below centre) and NGC 205 (upper right). The extend of the new PHAT survey of Andromeda using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is shown by the irregularly shaped region and the main image presented here by the rectangle within it.

Credit:

M31 PHAT Mosaic Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton (University of Washington), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler
Credit for ground-based background Image of M31: © 2008 R. Gendler, Used with Permission

Annotated section of Hubble image of the Andromeda Galaxy

This detailed image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a section of the Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31, and marks a few of the many features that are revealed within it. Several object types are labelled, including dust lanes, stellar clusters, Milky Way stars, and star-forming regions.

Credit:

Image Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble, and Z. Levay (STScI/AURA)
PHAT Brick Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble, J. Dalcanton (University of Washington), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA) and the PHAT team


Videos .

Zooming in on the Andromeda Galaxy

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1502a/

This video begins with a ground-based view of the night sky, before zooming in on a Hubble image of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.
The new Hubble image of the galaxy 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 40 000 light-years.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger (Skysurvey.org), 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.

Panning across the Andromeda Galaxy

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1502b/

This video pans over NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.
The new Hubble image of the galaxy is the biggest and sharpest 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 40 000 light-years.

Credit:

 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.


Fuente: ESA/Hubble Information Centre