Friday, February 1, 2013

A Little Andromeda For The Morning

The picture below shows the Andromeda Galaxy, our closet galactic neighbor at a distance of a mere 2 million light years and by the way the furthest object that can be seen by the naked eye, in the far end of the infrared spectrum.



What that means is that the image shows cold dust clouds swirling amongst the hot stars within the galaxy. And actually cold may be an understatement, as the image, taken with Herschel Space Observatory, resolves dust clouds that are just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.

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