A new photo from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows the Andromeda galaxy (M31) in a high-energy, X-ray view, according to the press release. The image was taken using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) on a mission that to date has observed 40 "X-ray binaries," which are strong sources of X-ray energy that harbor either a black hole or neutron star and feed off of an intergalactic source.
Researchers hope that the data gained from the mission will help them better understand how X-ray binaries participated in the evolution of the universe and may support current theories of their role in the heating of the intergalactic gas that stimulated the formation of the earliest galaxies.
"Andromeda is the only large spiral galaxy where we can see individual X-ray binaries and study them in detail in an environment like our own," said Daniel Wik of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We can then use this information to deduce what's going on in more distant galaxies, which are harder to see."
