Though the Andromeda Galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, the Hubble Space Telescope (a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency) is powerful enough to capture this high-definition panoramic view of the galaxy which resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of Andromeda’s pancake-shaped disk.
“This sweeping bird’s-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor.”
Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler
The video below will give you a closer look at over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy. Watch!
Credit: daveachuk