Hubble Space Telescope
Swipe to meet a galaxy in your neighborhood ➡️
This 2015 image shows a portion of the Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way's nearest major galactic neighbor.
Even though the galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away, Hubble’s vision is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy's pancake-shaped disk. That's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand!
We're sharing one outstanding image from each year of Hubble’s mission to celebrate its upcoming 35th birthday – counting down to a new series of anniversary images! Stay tuned for more, and get caught up at the link in our bio!
Image descripton: Extending over three images, a portion of the Andromeda Galaxy shines. At left, a bright, hazy, and yellow core spirals out into arms containing dark brown dust and bright blue stars.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team and R. Gendler
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