Swift does a large field mosaic image in the ultraviolet of M31
Ok, so Astronomy Picture of the Day beat me to this...
Andromeda in optical (click to embiggen)
Swift took a 330 picture mosaic of our nearest respectably sized neighbour galaxy, the venerable, and naked eye Andromeda, aka M31. They used the itsy bitsy little Ulvtravioler/Optical telescope on board, which has surprisingly decent UV capability.
Andromeda - ultraviolet mosaic (click to embiggen)
Very, very nice.
Go to apod to get the nice gif flick between the UV and optical images.
The UV images preferentially trace young hot stars, and so are mostly showing where current star formation is taking place.
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"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little." -George Carlin
"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden." -Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
The Milky Way galaxy is a relatively big spiral galaxy. So is Andromeda. There are about 20 dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to us; combined with us, all of this makes up the local group. But Andromeda is moving towards us, and eventually, it's going to merge with us.
“He who would search for pearls must dive below.” -John Dryden
I am definitely biased, but I think it's gorgeous! Thanks for posting it.