Space telescope shows off incredible images of Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spectacular sight to see through any Earth-based telescope, but two new pictures snapped by the European Space Agency's orbiting Herschel Space Observatory show off incredible new details of our nearest and largest galactic neighbour.

The first image (below) is a combination of pictures from two instruments supplied to the mission by NASA — the Photo-detecting Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE) — and it reveals what the distant galaxy looks like just based on the infrared light it emits (PACS measures near-infrared, SPIRE measures far-infrared). This gives an idea of the heat being emitted by objects in the galaxy.

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One of the reasons that astronomers use infrared telescopes is because light at infrared wavelengths can usually pass right through clouds of galactic dust, allowing them to see objects that were obscured from view in pictures taken with just visible light.

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A second image, taken with just the far-infrared-detecting SPIRE instrument shows even more details of the galaxy's spiral arms and the swirls of hot, massive stars orbiting the monster black hole at Andromeda's core.

Take a good look a these pictures (bigger versions can be seen here and here). Our galaxy is on a collision course with Andromeda, so if any of us are still around 4 billion years from now (hey, if we reach the singularity, it's possible!), we'll be getting a much closer view of it all!

(Photo credits: NASA/ESA)

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