The many "personalities" of our great galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are exposed in this new composite image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The wide, ultraviolet eyes of Galaxy Evolution Explorer reveal Andromeda's "fiery" nature -- hotter regions brimming with young and old stars. In contrast, Spitzer's super-sensitive infrared eyes show Andromeda's relatively "cool" side, which includes embryonic stars hidden in their dusty cocoons. Galaxy Evolution Explorer detected young, hot, high-mass stars, which are represented in blue, while populations of relatively older stars are shown as green dots. The bright yellow spot at the galaxy's center depicts a particularly dense population of old stars. Swaths of red in the galaxy's disk indicate areas where Spitzer found cool, dusty regions where stars are forming. These stars are still shrouded by the cosmic clouds of dust and gas that collapsed to form them. Together, Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Spitzer complete the picture of Andromeda's swirling spiral arms. Hints of pinkish purple depict regions where the galaxy's populations of hot, high-mass stars and cooler, dust-enshrouded stars co-exist. Located 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda is our largest nearby galactic neighbor. The galaxy's entire disk spans about 260,000 light-years, which means that a light beam would take 260,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy's disk is about 100,000 light-years across. This image is a false color composite comprised of data from Galaxy Evolution Explorer's far-ultraviolet detector (blue), near-ultraviolet detector (green), and Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer at 24 microns (red).
Release Date:
2006/10/03
Release Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Gordon (Univ. of Ariz.) & GALEX Science
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Gordon (Univ. of Ariz.) & GALEX Science
Karl D. Gordon (University of Arizona) Jeremy Bailin (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) Charles W. Engelbracht (University of Arizona) George H. Rieke (University of Arizona) Karl A. Misselt (University of Arizona) William B. Latter (SSC/Caltech) E. T. Young (University of Arizona) Matthew L. N. Ashby (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) Pauline Barmby (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) Brad K. Gibson (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) Dean C. Hines (University of Colorado) Joannah Hinz (University of Arizona) Oliver Krause (University of Arizona) Deborah A. Levine (SSC/Caltech) Francine R. Marleau (SSC/Caltech) Alberto Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech) Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) David A. Thilker (Johns Hopkins University) M. W. Werner (JPL) DavidA. Thilker (Johns Hopkins University) Charles G. Hoopes (Johns Hopkins University) Luciana Bianchi (Johns Hopkins University) Samuel Boissier (Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington) R. Michael Rich (University of California, Los Angeles) Mark Seibert (Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington) Peter G. Friedman (Caltech) Soo-Chang Rey (Caltech/ Center for Space Astrophysics, Yonsei University) Veronique Buat (Laboratoire d?Astrophysique de Marseille) Tom A. Barlow (Caltech) Yong-Ik Byun (Center for Space Astrophysics, Yonsei University) Jose Donas (Laboratoire d?Astrophysique de Marseille) Karl Forster (Caltech) Timothy M. Heckman (Johns Hopkins University) Patrick N. Jelinsky (University of California, Berkeley) Young-Wook Lee (Center for Space Astrophysics, Yonsei University) Barry F. Madore (IPAC/ Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington) Roger F. Malina (Laboratoire d?Astrophysique de Marseille) Christopher Martin (Caltech) Bruno Milliard (Laboratoire d?Astrophysique de Marseille) PatrickF. Morrissey (Caltech) SusanG. Neff (Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics, NASA GSFC) David Schiminovich (Caltech) Oswald H. W. Siegmund (University of California, Berkeley) Todd Small (Caltech) Alex S. Szalay (Johns Hopkins University) BarryY. Welsh (University of California, Berkeley) Ted K. Wyder (Caltech) And the GALEX science team
Instrument:
MIPS
Instrument:
Galaxy Evolution Explorer: Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and Near-ultraviolet (NUV)
