NASA Chandra’s Stunning New View of the Andromeda Galaxy Will Make You Look Twice

The Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way’s closest spiral neighbor, sits 2.5 million light-years away. For over 25 years, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has been peeling back the universe’s high-energy secrets, and its latest work is a new portrait of Andromeda, or Messier 31 (M31).

This is a rich tapestry woven from multiple telescopes. Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton capture the X-ray glow, GALEX grabs ultraviolet sparks, ground-based astrophotographers supply the optical shimmer, Spitzer reveals infrared warmth, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope sketches radio waves.

NASA takes it further with a 30-second sonification that turns data into sound. Picture the galaxy’s images layered vertically as a line sweeps across, transforming light into notes. X-rays sing in high, clear chimes, while infrared and radio resonate with deeper hums. Brighter spots hit louder, crafting a haunting melody that feels like the galaxy’s own voice. “This soundscape mirrors the composite’s wavelengths,” the Chandra team explains.

In X-ray light, Chandra unveils Andromeda’s core, where a supermassive black hole burns fiercely, surrounded by dense objects like neutron stars or stellar corpses. “Each wavelength tells a unique story about our galactic neighbor,” the Chandra team says.

Shift to infrared, and the galaxy’s spiral arms glow with rings of gas and dust, orbiting a swollen core. Optical light softens the scene, with arms fading into smoky bands sprinkled with starlight. Ultraviolet sharpens the view, spotlighting star-forming regions that burst like cosmic fireworks around a radiant central hub. In radio, the arms loosen into coiled, ropey strands, with no clear center to hold them.

This project also honors Dr. Vera Rubin, whose groundbreaking measurements of Andromeda’s rotation curves provided early evidence for dark matter’s invisible halos. “Her work reshaped how we understand galaxies,” the Chandra team notes. In 2025, Rubin’s legacy shines on a U.S. quarter, a first for an astronomer.

Chandra’s precision comes from its remarkable design. Launched in 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, its mirrors, smoothed to near-atomic perfection, detect X-ray sources 100 times fainter than earlier tech.