NASA Shares Largest Ever Image of Andromeda Galaxy, Internet Calls It ‘Extremely Beautiful’

The image shows the 48,000 light-year long stretch of the Andromeda Galaxy.

The US space agency NASA on Sunday shared the “largest ever” image taken of the Andromeda Galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope. The photo was taken seven years ago and is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the image shows the 48,000-light-year-long stretch of the Andromeda galaxy with more than 100 million stars in view. The panoramic image is split into three parts in the Instagram post, with the last part showing a band of blue stars with countless stars scattered throughout the image.

Take a look below:

“This image is split into three images. The first image shows a bright spot emanating from the lower left of the Andromeda galaxy with streaks extending in all directions. The light recedes in the upper quarter of the image to mostly black and parts of blue space with countless stars. The second photo has light scattering with bands of purple and blue that give way to the blackness of space,” NASA wrote in the caption.

Ever since it was shared, the image has left netizens mesmerized. It has accumulated more than one million likes. One user wrote: “This is beyond beautiful.” Another said: “This is phenomenal.” “Absolutely amazing,” commented a third.

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The space agency explained that since the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away, one can identify thousands of star clusters. NASA said that our Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda are similar in size and shape.

It should be noted that the image was first posted in 2015 and was re-shared yesterday. It shows a 48,000-light-year stretch of the galaxy in its “natural visible light color,” the agency said. “Because the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is a much larger target in the sky than the countless galaxies that Hubble routinely images that are billions of light-years away,” NASA explained.