The Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping pictures of the universe for the best part of 35 years, and now astronomers have completed a magnificent 417-megapixel photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy.
And the key takeaway? It's a galactic «trainwreck.» The 42,208 by 9,870 pixel panorama features 200 million stars, a mere fraction of the one trillion stars in the Andromeda galaxy overall (via PetaPixel).
The galaxy was originally believed to be part of our very own Milky Way, but it was Edwin Hubble himself who first determined that it was a separate entity, confirming that the Milky Way was not the extent of the universe and furthering our understanding of the vast darkness in which we exist.
Now, thanks to over 1,000 Hubble orbits and a decade's worth of snaps, we've got our most complete view of it yet. And according to Daniel Weisz, associate professor of astronomy at the University of California: “Andromeda’s a train wreck.
It looks like it has been through some kind of event that caused it to form a lot of stars and then just shut down. “This was probably due to a collision with another galaxy in the neighborhood.” The chief potential culprit of the galaxy's apparent state of disarray is the compact satellite galaxy Messier 32, which seems appropriately named given the circumstances.