She's a rainbow 🌈 This is our closest large neighbor galaxy, Andromeda. Located 2.5 million light-years away from our Sun, Andromeda is larger and has more stars than our Milky Way. The Andromeda galaxy appears rainbow-hued here because far-infrared and radio wavelengths that can’t normally be seen by the eye have been mapped to visible colors. This colorful view reveals the gas and dust filling the space between stars, giving us a better understanding of Andromeda’s structure and history. Understanding dust is critical to understanding the universe: it’s made by dying stars, it’s part of what makes up new stars, and many of the heavy chemical elements essential to forming planets like Earth are locked up in dust in interstellar space. Image description: The Andromeda galaxy’s spirals are shown in nearly all the colors of the rainbow, going from blue at the center to red at the edges. It contrasts sharply with the black background of space, which is dotted with tiny green dots of...