Andromeda Galaxy: Nasa Swift Satellite Takes Best-Ever Picture

Andromeda Seen in New Light

"NASA's Swift Satellite has captured the highest-ever resolution shot of one of our galactic neighbors: the Andromeda Galaxy.
Andromeda, also called M31, is a spiral galaxy located approximately 2.5 million light-years away from Earth. On a dark, clear night, this galaxy is even visible to the naked eye.
This ultraviolet portrait was assembled using 330 images captured by Swift, totaling 85 gigabytes of data, the equivalent of more than 20,000 mp3 music files. The images represent a total of 24 hours of observation time.
Swift captured a region around 200,000 light-years wide and 100,000 light-years high."

Lee Rogers at Rogue Government asks a very good question - "Nice picture. Why is it that NASA can shoot high quality photos of another galaxy but the pictures from the Moon and Mars look like absolute shit?"
And yes, I know the techniques are different. But it's been a constant deterioration of quality since around the Apollo era until now every release is doctored and looks like technology went backwards.

Case in point:

NASA moon crash did kick up debris plume as hoped

"A satellite camera picks up a plume of debris, circled above, seconds after a rocket smashed into the Cabeus crater. NASA estimates the dust went up about a mile. (NASA)"