Hubble captures the most detailed image of the Triangulum Galaxy with millions of stars

Second-largest image ever released by Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best-ever mosaic image of the Triangulum Galaxy. The high-resolution image is a composite of 54 separate images, which were captured by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

This is the second-largest image ever released by Hubble and shows Triangulum's central region as well as its inner spiral arms. It also provides an amazing view of the millions of stars that make up this galaxy.

"These detailed observations of the Triangulum Galaxy have tremendous legacy value - combined with those of the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and the irregular Magellanic Cloud galaxies, they will help astronomers to better understand star formation and stellar evolution," the European Space Agency said.

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy located about three million light-years away from the Milky Way. It gets its name from the Triangulum constellation, where it sits. The galaxy is usually visible as a faint, blurry object under dark-sky conditions. Being a faint object, its visibility is sharply affected by small amounts of light pollution.

The Triangulum Galaxy is a member of the Local Group - a cluster of more than 50 galaxies, which are bound together by gravity. The Milky Way is also a part of the group. Andromeda, the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy are the three largest members of the Local Group, measuring 200,000 light-years, 100,000 light-years, and 60,000 light-years across, respectively. The remaining galaxies of the group orbit any one of these three larger members.

Andromeda and the Milky Way also surpass the Triangulum Galaxy in terms of the number of stars they contain. Andromeda has at least two orders of magnitude more stars than the Triangulum Galaxy. The Milky Way also has at least an order of magnitude more stars than the Triangulum.

Triangulum Galaxy is also characterised by a huge amount of dust and gas and dust, which enables it to form stars at a rapid rate - about one solar mass in every two years.