Astronomers have announced the completion of a decade-long project to create a comprehensive panorama of the Andromeda Galaxy. The resulting image offers the most detailed view of the entire galaxy to date, enhancing our understanding of the formation and evolution of spiral galaxies in the universe.
Beginning in 2015, the painstaking process involved stitching together images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, focusing on the northern region of Andromeda. This initial image encompassed 100 million stars in a mosaic of approximately 1.5 billion pixels. At the recent American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Maryland, Zhuo Chen from the University of Washington announced the completion of similar work on the southern part of Andromeda, adding nearly 100 million stars to the previous mosaic.