Andromeda galaxy: Nasa Swift Satellite takes best-ever picture

October 17, 2009

Andromeda galaxy: Nasa Swift Satellite takes best-ever picture

The Andromeda galaxy, one of our nearest intergalactic neighbours, has been captured in higher detail than ever before by Nasa's Swift Satellite space telescope.

Swift spent around 24 hours staring at the distant smudge of light, taking 330 separate images totalling 85 gigabytes of data.

Visible in the centre of the image is a brightly glowing bulge, which represents a high concentration of older, cooler stars near the galaxy’s nucleus.

The whole image shows a region of space around 200,000 light years across and 100,000 high, around twice the diameter of the Milky Way.

Out on the spiral arms of the galaxy are the younger, hotter-burning stars, still being fed by the clouds of gas and dust they need to fuel their nuclear fusion.

Andromeda, a hop and a skip away in galactic terms at 2.5 million light years, was the first galaxy to be recognised outside the Milky Way, and the nearest spiral galaxy to our own.

Its discovery transformed our understanding of the universe. Beforehand it was thought that the mere 200 billion or so stars of the Milky Way represented the entire cosmos.

Since Andromeda was confirmed to be a separate entity, itself containing around a trillion stars, the estimate has grown to include more than 100 billion galaxies, each containing tens or hundreds of billions of stars.

The Swift Satellite is surveying various galaxies in our neighbourhood – known as the Local Group – in order to learn more about how stars form.

October 17, 2009

Nuvvu julai ve anukunna

racha post iche badai kuda na mama!!

KEka!!!

October 17, 2009

gud post bro......we don't know wots happenin on our own moon yet n we still have 100 billion galaxies with trillions of stars in dem

to be explored....universe is a big mystery n will be a big mystery...fcuk....... who knows may be multiverse theory is right n there

are more than one universes(multiverse)..anywayz *=:

October 17, 2009

gud post bro......we don't know wots happenin on our own moon yet n we still have 100 billion galaxies with trillions of stars in dem

to be explored....universe is a big mystery n will be a big mystery...fcuk....... who knows may be multiverse theory is right n there

are more than one universes(multiverse)..anywayz

U r right bro!! May be we have one more earth where people can think beyond our imagination!!!