This color-coded Chandra image (red/low energy, green/medium energy, and blue/high energy X-rays) shows the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy, where a diffuse, X-ray emitting cloud of hot gas was discovered in the midst of a collection of point-like sources. Credit: NASA/UMass/Z.Li/Q.D.Wang
Via Space.com:
A flurry of new images from ground and space telescopes is refining astronomers' ideas about the Milky Way's galactic neighbor Andromeda.
The images were taken with NASA's Spitzer and Chandra Space Telescopes and at the Gemini North Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
The pictures reveal new details about Andromeda's central bulge and inner disk, while also peering into its very heart to uncover the source of mysterious pinpricks of light. Meanwhile, a mosaic made from thousands of individual images captures the total amount of infrared light emitted by the galaxy, allowing astronomers to calculate Andromeda's "weight" and determine how many stars form in the galaxy per year.
The new images were presented Monday at the 208th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Calgary, Canada.
More here: Andromeda Revealed: New Closeups of a Galactic Neighbor.
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3 comments:
If you want to see some really cool images of Andromeda, check out the newest Spitzer images here:
Andromeda Adrift in Sea of Dust
(btw, it now seems that Andromeda is almost 3 times _larger_ than our own Milky Way galaxy (abt 260,000 ly diam -vs- abt 100,000 ly ... 1 trillion+ stars -vs- ~250 million stars).
Also, Andromeda and the Milky Way will start to 'collide' within about 10 million years. It will take another billion years or so for them to finally commingle and combine, though.
sorry, should read "250 billion stars" for our Milky Way, not 250 million
(anonymous was my post)
I found something and make
and extra $900 a month!
Wow, and here was I, thinking that nobody offered a degree in male prostitution.
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