The Andromeda Galaxy, also called M31, is a huge spiral galaxy fairly close in size and mass to our own Milky Way. Like the Milky Way it also has a central bulge of stars, and a supermassive black hole in its very core. In 1993, though, astronomers got a shock when Hubble images revealed not one but two blobs of light surrounding the core.
One of these two blobs was blue, the other redder. The observation history is a bit complex, but by 2012 it was clear that the blue blob was a cluster of hot, young stars surrounding the central supermassive black hole, and apparently about 100 – 200 million years old. The other feature was a lopsided elliptical disk of redder stars surrounding the blue cluster, brighter on one side than the other.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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