Credit & Copyright: Jordi Coy
Explanation:
What is the oldest thing you can see?
At 2.5 million
light years distant, the answer for the unaided
eye is the
Andromeda galaxy,
because its photons are 2.5 million years old when they reach you.
Most other apparent denizens of the night sky --
stars, clusters, and nebulae --
appear as they were only a few hundred to a few thousand years ago,
as they lie well within our own
Milky Way Galaxy.
Given its distance, light from
Andromeda
is likely also the farthest object that you can see.
Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy dominates the center of the featured
zoomed image,
taken from the Sahara Desert in
Morocco last month.
The featured image is a combination of three background and
one foreground exposure --
all taken with the same camera and from the same location
and on the same calendar day -- with the foreground image taken during the
evening
blue hour.
M110, a
satellite galaxy of Andromenda is visible just above and to the left of M31's
core.
As cool
as it may be to see this neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way with your own eyes,
long duration camera exposures
can pick up many faint and breathtaking details.
Recent data indicates that
our Milky Way Galaxy
will collide and combine with the
similarly-sized Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
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Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami:
Andromeda galaxy - Tumannost' Andromedy - M 31
Publikacii so slovami: Andromeda galaxy - Tumannost' Andromedy - M 31 | |
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