The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a breathtaking mosaic image of the Andromeda Galaxy, combining hundreds of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. The massive composite image features approximately 600 fields of view and shows the spiral galaxy “almost edge-on,” with over 200 million individually resolved stars.
This achievement took more than a decade to complete and required Hubble to orbit Earth over 1,000 times. The resulting mosaic contains roughly 2.5 billion individual pixels, a new record for an image of Andromeda.
The unprecedented level of detail in the image has enabled researchers to estimate that Andromeda could have as many as 1 trillion stars, up to 10 times more than the Milky Way. This discovery sheds light on the galaxy’s past and its potential future interactions with the Milky Way.
Astronomers believe that Andromeda collided with one of its current satellite galaxies in the past, likely stealing most of its stars in the process. By analyzing the distribution of stars within Andromeda, scientists can learn more about this cosmic collision.
The release of the new Hubble image coincides with the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Andromeda by Edwin Hubble. The observation of Andromeda has helped astronomers learn much about our own galaxy, making it a valuable proxy for understanding spiral galaxies in the universe at large.
This stunning mosaic serves as a testament to human ingenuity and scientific collaboration, providing new insights into the vast expanse of the cosmos.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/herculean-2-5-billion-pixel-mosaic-shows-our-closest-galactic-neighbor-like-never-before-and-took-more-than-10-years-to-create