Hubble's 2.5-Billion-Pixel Mosaic Reveals Andromeda in Breathtaking Detail.

The Andromeda galaxy is our closest galactic neighbor, barring dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. When conditions are right, we can see it with the naked eye, though it appears as a grey smudge.

It's the furthest object in the Universe that we can see without telescopic help.

The Hubble Space Telescope has created a massive 2.5-gigapixel panorama of Andromeda. It took 10 years and more than 1,000 orbits to capture all of the images.

We're stuck inside the Milky Way and will never escape it. (Yes, there's a tiny possibility we will in some far-off future.) The ESA's powerful Gaia telescope has given us our best look at our own galaxy from inside it, but even it has its limitations.

That's one of the reasons that observing Andromeda, also known as M31, is important. Like the Milky Way, M31 is also a barred spiral. By observing M31 in detail, we can learn more about our own galaxy. M31 is like a proxy for the Milky Way, and astronomers' chief tool for studying our galactic proxy is the Hubble.

Source: www.sciencealert.com

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