Zooming in on the Andromeda Galaxy

This video begins with a ground-based view of the night sky, before zooming in on a Hubble image of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.

The new Hubble image of the galaxy is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 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.

Credit:
NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Reisinger (Skysurvey.org), J. Dalcanton (University of Washington, USA), B. F. Williams (University of Washington, USA), L. C. Johnson (University of Washington, USA), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler.