Sometimes you’ve got to appreciate the bigger things.
NASA released the largest photo in the 25-year history of the Hubble Space Telescope this month. The photo of the Andromeda galaxy spans 100 million stars over 40,000 light years.
To see the full 1.5 billion pixel photo, you would need to stack up 600 high-definition TVs. On a smaller screen, you can fly through Andromeda in a super high-definition YouTube video:
All those dots are stars. Andromeda, one of the closest galaxies to The Milky Way, is estimated to have about 1 trillion stars.
The full 69,536 by 22,230 pixel photo (a DSLR camera shoots about 6,000 by 4,000 pixels) is available for download at NASA. It takes up 4.3 gigabytes of space, enough to fill up a DVD.
While Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away from Earth, it’s expected to collide with The Milky Way in about 4 billion years.
Gavin Stern is a national digital producer for the Scripps National Desk.
