Minsex: Hot
stars burn brightly in this new image from
NASA's
Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the
ultravioletside of a familiar face. At approximately 2.5 million
light-years away, the
Andromeda galaxy, or
M31, is our
Milky Way's largest
galactic neighbor. The entire
galaxy spans 260,000
light-years across -- a distance so large, it took 11 different image segments stitched together to produce this view of the
galaxy next door. 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
infraredwavelengths 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
Earthwith the
naked eye. This view is two-color composite, where blue represents far-
ultraviolet light, and orange is near-ultraviolet
light.
Messier 31, the Source: Minsex