An amazing composite image of M31 in Andromeda using both infra-red and X-rays was recently obtained using Herschel and XMM space observatories. It featured in the BBC Stargazing Live programme earlier this week and I’m told that, typically for astronomy, the inspiration behind it was … beer.
We've been sitting on this image since just before Christmas so that it could be unveiled during the BBC Stargazing Live show last night, but I've been aching to get this onto the blog ever since I saw it. This is a Herschel image of our nearest neighbour galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31, along with comparison images at other wavelengths. [/captio … Read More
via The Herschel Space Observatory
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This entry was posted on January 6, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under The Universe and Stuff with tags Andromeda, astronomy, Herschel, M31, XMM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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In the Dark 
January 6, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Eh? The inspiration behind what? The Herschel / XMM images of Andromeda, or Stargazing Live? The latter I can believe, given the rather genial train wreck of a programme that it was (I actually don’t mean that too critically), but if it’s the former, we can’t be having any of that nonsense in a serious organisation like ESA 🙂
BTW, will you be at the Planck meeting in Paris next week? We’ll be doing a press conference there on Tuesday with some early non-CMB science results in part based on the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue which will go public at the same time.
January 6, 2011 at 7:17 pm
As for the beer you’ll have to find Steve Eales and extract a confession. It’s nothing to do with me. Honest.
I won’t be at the Paris meeting. I’m not an official Plancky person, actually. I leave that to the proper cosmologists.
January 7, 2011 at 9:54 am
Hmmm, that scoundrel Eales, eh? Why am I not surprised? 🙂
As for Planck, well as a non-proper cosmologist, you’d be better suited at next week’s meeting than many others, since it’s all about the foreground stuff and compact sources, not the CMB. Only kidding … (Happy New Year, by the way).
January 7, 2011 at 11:18 am
I don’t really have a background in foregrounds.
Happy New Year also!