Video tour of Hubble’s panoramic view of the Andromeda Galaxy

This video features the largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope observations. It is a panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. It took over 10 years to make this vast and colorful portrait of the galaxy, requiring over 600 Hubble snapshots. The galaxy is so close to us, that in angular size it is six times the apparent diameter of the full Moon, and can be seen with the unaided eye. For Hubble’s pinpoint view, that’s a lot of celestial real estate to cover. This stunning, colorful mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars. That’s still a fraction of Andromeda’s population. And the stars are spread across about 2.5 billion pixels. The detailed look at the resolved stars will help astronomers piece together the galaxy’s past history that includes mergers with smaller satellite galaxies.

[Video description: This video shows a panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. The spiral disk galaxy is inclined to our view, making it look elliptical. Young blue stars are around the outer rim. Yellowish older stars are toward the center. The bright hub of the galaxy looks like the center of a fried egg. It took over 10 years to make this vast and colorful portrait of the galaxy, requiring over 600 Hubble snapshots. This stunning mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars. The camera zooms into the central portion of the galaxy, resolving a sea of myriad older stars. The camera pans along the galaxy’s vast disk which is over 200,000 light-years across. The view is etched with dark dust clouds. The stellar population looks bluer as we move toward the galaxy’s outer rim, rich in bright blue star clusters.]