Credit & Copyright: NASA,
ESA,
J. Dalcanton, B. F. Williams, L. C. Johnson
(U. Washington),
PHAT team,
R. Gendler
Explanation:
What stars compose the Andromeda galaxy?
To better understand, a
group of researchers
studied the
nearby spiral
by composing the largest image ever taken with the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The result, called the
Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), involved thousands of observations,
hundreds of fields,
spanned about a third of the galaxy, and resolved over 100 million stars.
In the featured composite image, the
central part of the galaxy is seen on the far left,
while a blue spiral arm is prominent on the right.
The brightest stars, scattered over the frame, are actually
Milky Way foreground
stars.
The PHAT data is being analyzed
to
better understand
where and how stars have formed in
M31 in contrast to our
Milky Way Galaxy,
and to identify and characterize Andromeda's
stellar clusters and
obscuring dust.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: star formation - stars
Publications with words: star formation - stars
See also:
- NGC 1893 and the Tadpoles of IC 410
- Star Factory Messier 17
- APOD: 2023 August 28 Á Star Formation in the Pacman Nebula
- APOD: 2023 July 10 Á Stars, Dust and Nebula in NGC 6559
- NGC 1333: Stellar Nursery in Perseus
- APOD: 2023 March 21 Á Dark Nebulae and Star Formation in Taurus
- The Tadpole Nebula in Gas and Dust