Last week, the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey , or ANGST, a collaboration led by the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota, published data from photos of millions of stars in 65 galaxies . It was made accessible to astronomers inside and outside the project to use in their research.
Astronomers peering out into our cosmic backyard have long understood that the Milky Way's galactic neighbours only seem similar on the surface. Now a detailed survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the diversity of those galaxies as they evolve over time. The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) program zeroed in on 14 million stars in 69 nearby galaxies. Such galaxies sit close enough so that Hubble's sharp eyes could single out the brightest stars instead of seeing a giant smear of light, and may help settle raging debates over how galaxies and their stars form in the first place.