Andromeda Galaxy enhanced
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Andromeda Galaxy enhanced
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
An enhanced ultraviolet view of Andromeda Galaxy, further enhanced.
You can see it with the the corner of your naked eye, even from some cities, if the night is right and your sight is keen. Through a telescope, it is a faint image that grows as you watch and your sight gets accustomed until it bursts. So far, so huge, yet right there...
New image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the ultraviolet side of Andromeda.
2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is our largest neighbor. The galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across.
The bands of blue-white making up the galaxy's striking rings are neighborhoods that harbor hot, young, massive stars. Dark blue-grey lanes of cooler dust show up starkly against these bright rings, tracing the regions where star formation is currently taking place in dense cloudy cocoons. Eventually, these dusty lanes will be blown away by strong stellar winds, as the forming stars ignite nuclear fusion in their cores. Meanwhile, the central orange-white ball reveals a congregation of cooler, old stars that formed long ago.
When observed in visible light, Andromeda's rings look more like spiral arms. The ultraviolet view shows that these arms more closely resemble the ring-like structure previously observed in infrared wavelengths with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers using Spitzer interpreted these rings as evidence that the galaxy was involved in a direct collision with its neighbor, M32, more than 200 million years ago.
Andromeda is so bright and close to us that it is one of only ten galaxies that can be spotted from Earth with the naked eye. This view is two-color composite, where blue represents far-ultraviolet light, and orange is near-ultraviolet light.
Original image and text by NASA/JPL-Caltech, further image enhancements and post processing by Weston Westmoreland.
You can learn more about what drives me in my blog:
http://inspiringthoughtsandimages.com/
Uploaded
December 1st, 2014
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