                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2025 February 21

                      Hubble's Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic
                  Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Mission,
     B. F. Williams (Univ Washington), Z. Chen (Univ Washington), L. C.
                           Johnson (Northwestern),
                    Processing; Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

   Explanation: The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space
   Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral
   Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames assembled from
   observations made from July 2010 to December 2022, the full Hubble
   Andromeda Galaxy mosaic spans almost six full moons across planet
   Earth's sky. A cropped version shown above is nearly two full moons
   across and partially covers Andromeda's core and inner spiral arms.
   Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light-years
   away. That makes it the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky
   Way. Our perspective on the spiral Milky Way is anchored to the view
   from the location of the Sun, a star found within the Milky Way's
   galactic disk. But Hubble's magnificent Andromeda mosaic offers an
   expansive view of a large spiral galaxy from the outside looking in.
   Hubble's comprehensive, detailed data set extending across the
   Andromeda Galaxy will allow astronomers to make an unprecedented
   holistic exploration of the mysteries of spiral galaxy structure and
   evolution.

                      Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

