Astronomy Picture of the Day 5-19-03

NASA ^ | 5-19-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 May 19

The Andromeda Deep Field
Credit: T. M. Brown (STScI) et al., ESA, NASA

Explanation: What can you learn from looking into the depths of space? In an effort to find out true ages of stars in neighboring Andromeda galaxy's halo, astronomers stared into the galaxy giant with the new Advanced Camera for Surveys through the Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting exposure of over three days, shown above, is the longest exposure in visible light ever taken, although shorter than the multi-wavelength effort toward the Hubble Deep Field. The final image illuminated not only Andromeda (M31) but the distant universe. Andromeda's halo stars turned out to be have a wider range of ages than our Milky Way's halo stars, likely indicating more encounters with small neighboring galaxies. Visible on the above left is one of Andromeda's globular star clusters, while literally thousands of background galaxies are seen in the distance universe, far beyond M31.

[petuniasevan]

The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys targeted a very small portion of
the Andromeda Galaxy's halo. The position and size of Hubble's image are shown by the green arrow and box.

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Andromeda Galaxy

Right Ascension	00 : 42.7 (h:m)
Declination	+41 : 16 (deg:m)
Distance	2900 (kly)
Visual Brightness	3.4 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	178x63 (arc min)

Note the magnitude. That's the brightness over the TOTAL area of the galaxy. It subtends a large area in the sky: its apparent width is several times that of the Moon! If you want to see it with the naked eye, you will need to know where to look. Clear, DARK skies are a MUST!

Here's a short-exposure camera photo (28 mm lens) of constellation Andromeda and its famous galaxy. M32 is the orangey smudge in upper center.

[petuniasevan]

[petuniasevan]

My hubby, poorman, finally got back from South Dakota last night. He downloaded the lunar eclipse photos he did get Thursday night (clouds rolled in there, too), and I made a montage of them in the order that he got them. He was experimenting with settings so that accounts for the color and brightness changes. Enjoy!

[RightWhale]

Can still see M31 on an exceptional night, but only because I figured out how to trace it down when I was a kid age 9 and the skies were still dark in those days.

[sistergoldenhair]

Great shots of the moon.
Thanks for posting them.

[~EagleNebula~]

Excellent shots! I am in SD, and was watching it on my way home from work! It was impressive. Even more impressive was how quickly it came back, and the intense brightness of the moon the rest of the early morning. It was nearly as bright as daylight in my yard at 3-4am!

Thanks for sharing!!!