One of the more difficult ideas to grasp in astronomy is the sheer scale of the cosmos. Even as a professional in the field it’s much easier to focus on numbers and data than really step back and appreciate scale. Every now and then there is an image that forces you contemplate scale, such as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Now NASA and ESA have released a new image of the Andromeda galaxy. It is the most detailed image of Andromeda ever made,and you can check it out in this video.
Light of Dead Stars
Science news has been a buzz about a whole posse of new black holes discovered in the constellation of Andromeda. The reason for this is not that these have suddenly been discovered, but rather that a new paper on results from Chandra is being published in the Astrophysical Journal last year, and the press releases have been published.
Survey Says
The image below is the first complete x-ray survey of the Andromeda galaxy. The Andromeda galaxy (also known as M31) is about 2.5 million light years away. It is a spiral galaxy very similar to our own Milky way, so surveys of Andromeda are very useful in understanding galaxies like ours.