2.5 million light-years away, millions of stars stood ready as photo models for Hubble.
The famous telescope has taken a record photo over the past 10 years:Hundreds of individual images were used to create a never-before-seen image of our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda.
We'll explain the interesting background and show you the Stellar artwork vonNASA/ESA. However, despite its size of 2.5 billion pixels, even that only gives an idea of the true gigantism behind all that light.
Something else historic also happened about 10 years ago. This did not produce a beautiful photographic work of art of our neighboring galaxy, but rather created the currently dominant commercial branch of space travel. And all of that just.
More than 600 images become a mosaic
- Over the course of ten years, the Hubble telescope has taken more than 600 photos from different angles of the neighboring galaxy. This resulted in a photomontage.
- Scientists painstakingly put these together like a puzzle. The result is a 2.5 billion pixel hybrid of work of art and scientific achievement.
- It also breaks records: as the largest photo mosaic ever created using Hubble images.
You can find the work in its original resolutionon a NASA server.
Total recording DetailsOn the one hand, you can see the complete, albeit shrunken, image here, and on the other hand, some regions that NASA/ESA highlight as details.
Meanwhile, Hubble only images a fraction of the stars. Only 200 million particularly bright specimens can be seen on the mosaic, which shine far more powerfully than our sun.
There are probably several billion more stars hidden behind it. Because Andromeda, or also called Messier-31, probably contains around a trillion, i.e. 1,000 billion stars, according to current research.
The Milky Way has a maximum of 300 billion stars.
Typically, Hubble takes far less time and photos to image an object. But the Andromeda Galaxy shines so large in our night sky that Hubble cannot zoom far enough away to compare it with a conventional lens.
It is larger than the moon in the night sky, but less bright (viaAstrocram chest).
You can see the galaxy with the naked eye. In order for this to succeed, you have to look east in Germany. Depending on the season, weather and lighting conditions, it can be difficult to see.
In any case, our ancestors living in the distant future will be able to catch a clearer view of their gigantic neighbor. The reason: The Milky Way and Andromeda are getting closer to each other, but only visible over billions of years.
