Panorama of Spiral Galaxy, M31

This image was created with data from the Local Group Survey, completed with the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M31, M33 and our Milky Way are the three largest members of the Local Group of galaxies. M31 is a spiral galaxy very similar in size and mass to our own. Ten 'pointings' of the camera along the galaxy in five filters were used to make the image. You could line seven full moons across the image. The image was generated with observations with the U (violet), B (blue), V (cyan), I (orange) and H-alpha (red) filters. The five filters show the star colors and HII star forming regions in vivid detail. About 600 million pixels in size, it is the largest and most detailed image of M31 ever completed that covers the entire galaxy. This image is rotated CW 127 degrees from North is up, East to the left.