About 100 years after astronomer Edwin Hubble's discovered the "magnificent" spiral nebula, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA scientists have produced the most comprehensive survey of the Andromeda galaxy, or Messier 31. The Andromeda galaxy is approximately 2.5 million light-years away from the Milky Way.

"Photographing Andromeda was a herculean task because the galaxy is a much bigger target on the sky than the galaxies Hubble routinely observes, which are often billions of light-

In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way—the magnificent Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31).