Andromeda Galaxy - High Resolution Interactive
As you've probably heard, the Hubble Space Telescope took a very high resolution photograph of the Milky Way's closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
This link will take you to an interactive, zoomable and pan-able version of the image. The sheer detail comes to life as it streams to your computer like google earth does when you zoom in. To say i was taken aback after zooming in fully at any region of the image is an understatement, for those grainy pixels are not just noise.
No words...
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/
Astronomy Journalist Phil Plait wrote:
"When I first saw this image, I was seriously impressed by its size. Andromeda is huge, as wide as four or five full Moons across the sky (a viral image from 2014 makes that pretty clear). But it looked odd to me, speckly, like a digital image taken in low light conditions, where noisy pixels make the image look grainy. I knew that couldn’t be the case; Andromeda is bright, and the exposure times from Hubble would assure a high-quality image.
I had a sneaking suspicion what I was seeing, but I had to download the high-res image to be sure.
Those weren’t noisy pixels. Those were freaking stars."
This link will take you to an interactive, zoomable and pan-able version of the image. The sheer detail comes to life as it streams to your computer like google earth does when you zoom in. To say i was taken aback after zooming in fully at any region of the image is an understatement, for those grainy pixels are not just noise.
No words...
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/
Astronomy Journalist Phil Plait wrote:
"When I first saw this image, I was seriously impressed by its size. Andromeda is huge, as wide as four or five full Moons across the sky (a viral image from 2014 makes that pretty clear). But it looked odd to me, speckly, like a digital image taken in low light conditions, where noisy pixels make the image look grainy. I knew that couldn’t be the case; Andromeda is bright, and the exposure times from Hubble would assure a high-quality image.
I had a sneaking suspicion what I was seeing, but I had to download the high-res image to be sure.
Those weren’t noisy pixels. Those were freaking stars."
