Andromeda Galaxy Photo: Colorful Light Rings Show Formation of Stars [Pic]
A new image of the Andromeda galaxy was released on Monday that captured the formation of new stars in the finest detail yet to be seen elsewhere.
The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory took the latest image of Andromeda, also known as M31, the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way at a distance of 2.5 million light-years.
The Herschel Space Observatory is a project of the European Space Agency, in close partnership with NASA. Its sophisticated instruments include the largest single mirror ever built for a space telescope. It was built to collect long-wavelength radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the universe.
The image showed detailed lanes of stars in the process of creation. There are also stars of different colors and a blue bulge at the center of the galaxy which is home to hotter and older stars.
"Sensitive to the far-infrared light from cool dust mixed in with the gas, Herschel seeks out clouds of gas where stars are born," according to NASA. "The new image reveals some of the very coldest dust in the galaxy -- only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero -- colored red in this image."
The galaxy is host to several hundred billion stars, and the Hershel image shows that many more stars will soon spark into existence.
Since Andromeda is within a close proximity it makes it an ideal star system to study for scientists on Earth.
However, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are close enough that they may eventually come together.
Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore that helps operate the Hubble Space Telescope, stated that the two galaxies will collide head on in about 4 billion years.
"This is pretty violent as things go in the universe," said van der Marel, according to The Associated Press. "It's like a bad car crash in galaxy-land."
