Newly forming stars glow fiery bright in this infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy taken by the European Space Agency's Herschel spacecraft. The galaxy's spiral structure, which is similar to that of the Milky Way, will morph into one large elliptical galaxy once it merges with the Milky Way. ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J. Fritz, U. Gent; X-ray: ESA/XMM Newton/EPIC/W. Pietsch, MPE
If you look toward the constellation Andromeda on a clear night far from city lights, you can barely make out a long, fuzzy blob called the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is the nearest large neighbor of our Milky Way, though it sits some 2.5 million light-years away. That makes it the most distant object regularly visible with the naked eye.
