Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Andromeda Galaxy in Ultraviolet

APOD.NASA.gov ^ | 18 Jul, 2021 | Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, GALEX

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: What does the Andromeda galaxy look like in ultraviolet light? Young blue stars circling the galactic center dominate. A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, really is just next door as large galaxies go. Spanning about 230,000 light-years, it took 11 different image fields from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite telescope to produce this gorgeous portrait of the spiral galaxy in ultraviolet light in 2003. While its spiral arms stand out in visible light images, Andromeda's arms look more like rings in ultraviolet. The rings are sites of intense star formation and have been interpreted as evidence that Andromeda collided with its smaller neighboring elliptical galaxy M32 more than 200 million years ago. The Andromeda galaxy and our own comparable Milky Way galaxy are the most massive members of the Local Group of galaxies and are projected to collide in several billion years -- perhaps around the time that our Sun's atmosphere will expand to engulf the Earth.

[MtnClimber]

To be added or removed from the Astronomy Picture of the Day ping list please send me a request via "Private Reply" (Mail).

For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list.

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[AFB-XYZ]

Magnificent!

[janetjanet998]

VIDEO 100+ Hubble Space Telescope Photos Ultra HD (4K)
https://rumble.com/vjzji6-100-hubble-space-telescope-photos-ultra-hd-4k.html

(Hubble just went back online after down for 30 days)

[Jamestown1630]

And they try to tell us that there is no intelligent ‘design’ behind the Universe...

[Steely Tom]

Lotta hot stuff in that picture.

If you could see Andromeda by eye (it’s too dim, unfortunately) its long axis would be about six times the apparent size of the moon.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m straining to come up with something witty but ... nothing.

[Fai Mao]

Sort of fits with this list.
I have no idea if this guy is legitimate or not, but it was an interesting video.

Is Apollo 11’s Lunar Module Still In Orbit Around The Moon 52 Years Later?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHbLV7xEhc

[MtnClimber]

I am hoping that the sun holds off on going supernova long enough that we can see Andromeda galaxy collide with the Milky Way galaxy.

[SpaceBar]

I’d like to see a false color image of the U.S. in the stupid part of the spectrum.

We all know where the hot-spots would be.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

If you are somewhere away from city lights and have clear skys you can see it. It is not clearly a galaxy, but looks like a smudge or cloud in the sky. I can't see it where I live now, but I could see it when I visited my parents in Wisconsin. (MtnClimber, can you see it where you are in Colorado?)

Here is a picture of the night sky.

https://earthsky.org/tonight/find-the-andromeda-galaxy-in-autumn/

A brighter Andromeda would look like this:

https://www.iflscience.com/space/what-andromeda-would-look-night-if-it-were-brighter/

[Antihero101607]

Thank you for posting.

It’s nice to see something amazing and beautiful these days.band astronomy was a favorite college science elective of mine.

[beethovenfan]

Is there a name for the blue star in the lower left?

[rfp1234]

You may have been exposed to Crichtonite.

[Steely Tom]

Is there a name for the blue star in the lower left?

The star to which you refer isn't nearly as prominent in the visible spectrum as it is here, in the ultraviolet. I can't find a name associated with it.

The fuzzy yellowish elliptical thing below and to the right of the center of Andromeda is NGC 205. It doesn't have a proper name, but it was observed and catalogued by Charles Messier, carrying his index M110. It is relatively near Andromeda, and is referred to as one of its "satellite galaxies."

The yellowish fuzzy thing that's almost directly to the left of Andromeda's center (and just a little above it), seemingly located on the outer edge of Andromeda's disk, is NGC 221, also known as M32. It is another galaxy near Andromeda. NGC 221 has a black hole at its center; NGC 205 does not.

[Steely Tom]

At the center of the Andromeda galaxy is a cluster of massive stars which are all orbiting a "supermassive black hole," a very powerful one, with an estimated mass on the order of 150 million times the mass of the Sun. The gravitational field of these center stars is so intense that it affects the movement of other stars, and of whole galaxies, out to a distance of more than one hundred thousand light-years away from it.

By comparison, the black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a mass estimated at 4 million times that of the sun.

[Nateman]

[Steely Tom]

Thank you for those beautiful illustrations. Andromeda would be a magnificent sight, if only our eyes were sensitive enough to see its whole size.

I remember when I would look up and study the sky as a child and teenager (something I spent hours doing) I did notice a few things that looked like clouds, or “smudges,” but that definitely weren’t clouds because they were visible on perfectly clear nights. I’m pretty sure those must have been galaxies, but I didn’t know enough about practical astronomy to realize it at the time. Probably I was seeing Andromeda, because it is visible year-round where I live.

Back then my eyesight was far better than it is today, of course, I was often able to spot satellites moving rapidly and silently across the sky, seemingly ten times as fast as the high-flying jets that I loved to watch, with their flashing strobe lights and sometimes just-barely-audible whispering sound.

How I wish my eyes could still be that good.

[BenLurkin]

Very cool.