The Andromeda Galaxy

This detailed image of the Andromeda Galaxy was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. Located in the constellation of Andromeda, the Princess, the Andromeda Galaxy is a large spiral galaxy very similar to our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. It is over 65,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 2.2 million light-years in distance. The area shown in this image is quite large on the sky, covering about five times the area of the full Moon. This true-color image was created by combining images taken in seven filters: U (violet), B (blue), V (green), R (orange), I (red), Hydrogen-Alpha (red) and Oxygen [OIII] (green).