I recently blogged that the absense of Hubble would leave a huge gap in astrophography which didn’t seem likely to be filled anytime soon. NASA however just released this amazing photo of M31 (Andromeda galaxy to most of us) showing over 20,000 UV light sources.The image was taken by the SWIFT spacecraft which was launched in 2004. It is the most  detailed hi-resolution photo yet of our neigbouring galaxy. It was put together from 85Gigs of data by an intern over the summer. I WANT THAT JOB!  Click on the image to see it in all it’s glory…..be warned, it is a high resolution image, but worth the look.

Andromea in UV