Space is big, staggeringly so, uncomprehendingly so, and NASA has just delivered a picture that hammers the point home… just in case you hadn’t thought about it in a while.
The image, captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.
Staggering Facts About the Picture:
- The full image and has 1.5 billion pixels. You would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image.
- It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over a 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.
- NASA: “It’s like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand.”
- This is a picture of one section of one galaxy. Scientists believe there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the Universe.
Here’s a link to the full-size, zoomable image.
And here’s the video the sums it all up and includes a nice soundtrack. The was contributed by Youtube user daveachuk. The best part is the last few seconds where it all gets put in perspective.
