| ING Media Archival Record |
| ITEM REFERENCE | 1890 |
| PERMANENT LINK | https://astro.ing.iac.es/outreach/?1890 |
| EXTACCESS | yes |
| COLLECTION | Image archive |
| TITLE | The Andromeda Galaxy |
| KEYWORDS | Galaxies;Galaxies;Messier |
| DATE | 1992-01-01 |
| DESCRIPTION | The nearest comparable spiral galaxy to the Milky Way is M31 (NGC 224), the great galaxy in Andromeda. It is visible to the unaided eye and has been known as a curious hazy patch since ancient times. Only in the last 75 years has its nature as a distant city of stars like the Milky Way become apparent. This image is a 3-colour photographic composition from the Isaac Newton Telescope. It shows the central part of M31, the huge mass of stars that are in orbit around its nucleus. Silhouetted against this starry background are tangled sheets and curtains of dust, very reminiscent of dust clouds we see in our own galaxy. At the heart of M31 is a tiny, bright nucleus, seen to be slightly elongated. Hubble Space Telescope pictures show the nucleus to be a double structure, possible the remains of the nucleus of another galaxy which has now been almost completely absorbed in M31. Around the binary nucleus swirls a huge cloud of mostly old, faint stars. These stars are unresolved on the plates that were used to make picture 3 and have been removed by a photographic process known as unsharp masking. PDF version: https://www.ing.iac.es/PR/dissemination/andromeda.pdf |
| CREDIT | Malin-IAC-RGO (copyright). |
| TELESCOPE | INT |
| INSTRUMENT | Photographic camera |
| THUMB_75 | 
https://www.ing.iac.es/PR/science/int002s.jpg |
| AVAILABLE FILES | JPG (36K) 320×400 pixels |
| TIMESTAMP | 2024-08-28 15:25:02 |
| USAGE | For publication or display (electronic or otherwise), all photos, images or videos must be credited: "Photo/image/video courtesy of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma" unless otherwise noted in the provided credit line. Please contact ING's Public Relations Officer (outreach  ing.iac.es) with all the details of the use. |
