Andromeda: our nearest large galactic neighbour

The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest large galactic neighbour, containing several hundred billion stars. Combined, these images show all stages of the stellar life cycle. The infrared image from Herschel shows areas of cool dust that trace reservoirs of gas in which forming stars are embedded. The optical image shows adult stars. XMM-Newton’s X-ray image shows the violent endpoints of stellar evolution, in which individual stars explode or pairs of stars pull each other to pieces.