Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Andromeda Galaxy panorama

Andromeda Galaxy panorama

Voting period ends on 27 Oct 2024 at 17:11:33 (UTC)

Reason: This is the largest (and maybe even sharpest) image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. High EV because it shows the star density of the Andromeda Galaxy, and an absolutely amazing image overall. Very surprised it hasn't been nominated yet. ~~There's a 0.7 gigabyte version (File:Andromeda Galaxy M31 - Heic1502a Full resolution.tiff), but that one isn't transcluded anywhere and is so big that it needs to be downloaded to open.~~ Thanks to Chris Woodrich, we now have the full-sized, 1.5 billion-pixel image.
Articles in which this image appears: Zooming in on the Andromeda Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy, Andromeda (constellation)
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Space/Panorama
Creator: NASA

Support (ALT1) as nominator – Sir MemeGod  17:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My God, it's full of stars! Moonreach (talk) 18:20, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Support alt 1, even better! – Moonreach (talk) 18:58, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Let's not jump the gun... this isn't 2015 anymore, and we can get the full resolution. I'm using the upload Wizard right now. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 18:21, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be marvelous. Sir MemeGod  18:23, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support ALT1 - Huge image, excellent quality. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support ALT1 – Yann (talk) 18:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am pretty sure all those small dots filling the background are noise, not stars. It's measurement or detection noise, somewhat similar to high ISO noise (but more intense). The image has scientific value even with all that noise, because lots of tiny stars are still discernible (perhaps for first time ever) within the noise, though not easily. However, for a galaxy photo in an encyclopedia, the excessive noise misleads, coming across as stars. It's just too noisy IMO. ~~-Oppose.~~ Bammesk (talk) 02:02, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bammesk: From what I've gathered from HubbleSite and overall specifications for the Hubble, those objects are more likely than not individual astronomical bodies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey did a similar look at the Milky Way's center, and it looks exactly the same when zoomed in. The link Chris posted actually sums it up really well. Sir MemeGod  12:26, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This confirms it. "Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view -- over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk." Sir MemeGod  13:13, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As per the ESA, there are more than one hundred million stars in the image. I don't know if they are counting all of the stars in the spiral galaxies and other multi-star features in the image (some are highlighted here), but based on available sources that doesn't appear to be noise. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 10:13, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I struck my vote. Reading This, linked above, helped. Thanks to both for the replies. I am still curious and a bit skeptical. The image has its own en-Wiki article, that's something. Bammesk (talk) 02:14, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support ALT1 – --Janke | Talk 17:41, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support ALT1 – Hamid Hassani (talk) 03:23, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support ALT1 – _ZZ^Z 'S 06:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support alt 1. MER-C 10:16, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]