📍 Andromeda Galaxy
➡️ 2.5 million light-years
🏠 Andromeda constellation

We’ve reached our final #meetyourcosmicneighbors destination: the Andromeda Galaxy! With almost the same mass as our home galaxy, Andromeda is headed for a collision with the Milky Way in 2-4 billion years. For now, we can admire its beauty from afar.

As a spiral galaxy, Andromeda’s winding arms are one of its most remarkable features. Hubble zoomed in to get a close look at its rosy tendrils, revealing swathes of ionized gas. These regions — which are common in spiral and irregular galaxies — often indicate the presence of recent star formation.

To investigate the spiral galaxy’s stellar properties, Hubble’s instruments peered through hedges of gas and observed a valuable sample of stars.

This concludes our intergalactic journey for Meet Your Cosmic Neighbors! We hope you enjoyed this series, and that you look forward to more Hubble science.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, M. Boyer (Space Telescope Science Institute), and J. Dalcanton (University of Washington); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

#nasa #hubble #andromeda #galaxy #space #science #stars #astronomy #universe

📍 NGC 261
➡️ 200,000 light-years
🏠 Tucana constellation

This emission nebula, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, blooms a brilliant red in our next #meetyourcosmicneighbors image!

NGC 261 is home to numerous stars hot enough to irradiate surrounding hydrogen gas, causing the cloud to emit a pinkish-red glow.

The region contains molecular clouds, which are extremely dense and compact regions of gas and dust. Here, cradled in the cold areas of molecular hydrogen, is where most stars form.

The combined power of Hubble’s instruments form a wide spectral coverage that helped capture the star-forming properties within the nebula.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and L. C. Johnson (Northwestern University); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Spiders aren’t always what we want for neighbors, but the nearby Tarantula Nebula is an exception! 🕷️

This star-forming site has been caught in Hubble’s web many times, in many wavelengths of light.

It calls the Large Magellanic Cloud home – this is one of our Milky Way’s closest companions, a relatively nearby galaxy that orbits our galaxy, and is about 160,000 light-years away.

The Tarantula Nebula is the brightest stellar nursery in our "Local Group" of galaxies, and it contains some of the most massive and hottest stars known.

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We can learn things from our neighbors! Take the Large Magellanic Cloud for example.

It’s a nearby dwarf galaxy that’s home to lots of star clusters like this one, NGC 1898. Because the LMC is close to us we can use it like a laboratory to study star formation.

NGC 1898 is a globular cluster, which is a roughly spherical group of stars bound together by their mutual gravity. These sorts of clusters are some of the oldest known objects in the universe.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

#meetyourcosmicneighbors #nasa #hubble #space #stars #science #astronomy #universe #cosmos #telescope

📍 Pegasus Dwarf spheroidal galaxy
➡️ 2.7 million light-years
🏠 Pegasus constellation

Welcome to a mini galaxy in our neck of the universe. This is one of at least 13 dwarf galaxies that orbit the massive Andromeda Galaxy, which is our Milky Way’s closest grand spiral neighbor.

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies like this one are some of the dimmest and least massive galaxies known! They’re usually dominated by older and “middle-aged” stars, and don’t contain much gas.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Weisz (University of California - Berkeley); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

#meetyourcosmicneighbors #nasa #hubble #galaxy #science #space #stars #astronomy #universe #pegasus