The Andromeda Galaxy

This spiral galaxy is 200,000 light-years across with a super-massive black hole 5 million times more massive than our sun at its center. The light that exposed this photograph traveled through space for 2.5 million years. Andromeda is the most distant object that can be seen by the unaided eye. Contains about 1 trillion stars, compared to 400 billion in the Milky Way (our home) galaxy. Two smaller satellite galaxies, M32 (above) and NGC205 (below).