The Big Picture: Andromeda galaxy panorama by Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest picture of the Andromeda galaxy yet, and it's so large we've had to post the scaled-down version for you. This panorama was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble as viewed in visible, near-ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. What you see is the galaxy's colors in visible light behind red and blue filters, encompassing 100 million stars across 40,000 light-years of space. Those millions of stars make up but a third of our neighboring galaxy, since the photo focuses on its densest part. Since the full image boasts 1.5 billion pixels and needs a whopping 600 HD TVs to display in full, we'll just link you to a page where you can zoom in and look at small parts of the picture in detail.
