More than 100 million stars can be seen in this vast view of the Andromeda galaxy in the largest image ever taken seven years ago and assembled by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Although Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away, Hubble is powerful enough to see individual stars in this image, which shows a 61,000 light-year section of our large galaxy. At 260,000 light years across, Andromeda is more than twice as large as the Milky Way, and astronomers believe the two galaxies will merge in about 4 billion years.

Andromeda's core is on the left, surrounded by dense stars, with dust and stellar streaks becoming more sparse as we move away from the centre, while groups of young blue stars show star clusters and star formation regions.

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In the lower left, Andromeda's core glows bright yellow, with whispers of grey dust obscuring it. As you move outwards, the yellow light fades into blues, blacks and purples, where millions of stars appear as tiny dots of yellow, white and blue.