Pic Of The Day

Event Horizon

Event Horizon

Event Horizon

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m31_gendler.jpg


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Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it.

The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of diffuse sky objects. M31 is so distant it takes about two million years for light to reach us from there.

Although visible without aide, the above image of M31 is a digital mosaic of 20 frames taken with a small telescope. Much about M31 remains unknown, including how the center acquired two nuclei.
 
Yeah, the large image is a bit of a strain for 56K peeps, i will include a warning with future posts ;)

I'm glad everyone likes it, Its sometimes hard to post a reply to a thread like this, but as long as i know people are enjoying the images it will just need a "bump" to stop it falling of the page.
 
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Now looking at that picture how can anyone say that there aren't other lifeforms? The possibility that each star in the galaxy could host a planet like our own makes it worthwhile to me.
 
Originally posted by DaemonHunter
Now looking at that picture how can anyone say that there aren't other lifeforms? The possibility that each star in the galaxy could host a planet like our own makes it worthwhile to me.
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I couldn't agree more, and as this is day one of (Pic of the Day :) ) i have this delight for you, showing a deep field view of multiple galaxies.

hst_abell2218.jpg
 
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That's the kind of image that's truly inspirational. It's just amazing to think that Earth would just be a miniscule dot within that...

The second pic, how was that captured? It reminds me of a documentary I saw about the theory that galaxys are interconnected via membranes, or something like that. It was interesting nonetheless.

Very good idea this, I shall look forward to the next installment! :)
 
Originally posted by Augmented

The second pic, how was that captured?
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I am so pleased to see other people enjoying these:)

As for you question,

The image was taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 onboard the Hubble space telescope.

Abell 2218, is a spectacular example of gravitational lensing. The
arc-like pattern spread across the picture like a spider web is an
illusion caused by the gravitational field of the cluster.

The cluster is so massive and compact that light rays passing through
it are deflected by its enormous gravitational field, much as an
optical lens bends light to form an image. The process magnifies,
brightens and distorts images of objects that lie far beyond the
cluster. This provides a powerful "zoom lens" for viewing galaxies
that are so far away they could not normally be observed with the
largest available telescopes.

The abundance of lensing features in Abell 2218 has been used to make a
detailed map of the distribution of matter in the cluster's center.
From this, distances can be calculated for a sample of 120 faint
arclets found on the Hubble image. These arclets represent galaxies
that are 50 times fainter than objects that can be seen with
ground-based telescopes.
 
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