Image of M31 Heralds the Dawn of HSC’s Productivity

A stunning image of M 31 captured by Subaru Telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) displays the fruits of international collaboration and technological sophistication aligned with cutting-edge science. In addition to providing information about a nearby galaxy that resembles our own, this image demonstrates HSC’s capability to fulfill Subaru Telescope’s intention of producing a large-scale survey of the Universe. The combination of a large mirror, a wide field of view, and sharp imaging represents a giant step into a new era of observational astronomy and will contribute to answering questions about the nature of dark energy and matter. It marks another successful stage in HSC’s commissioning process, which involves checking all of HSC’s capabilities before it is ready for open use.

M31 captured by HSC. (Credit: HSC Project / NAOJ)

A comparison of the images of M31 captured by Suprime-Cam (bottom left and middle) and HSC (right). The yellow-outlined boxes within HSC’s image illustrate the dramatic difference between Suprime-Cam’s field of view and HSC’s as well as the high quality of resolution in the HSC image. An image of the apparent diameter of the Moon is shown as a standard by which to compare the fields of view of the Suprime-Cam and HSC images. (Credit: NAOJ)

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