M31: The Andromeda Galaxy

Tuesday night was a beauty here in Oneonta. A few students and I went up to College Camp to take some images with the 16-inch telescope using a mounted digital SLR camera, which I will feature in the next few postings. Initially the camera was piggybacked to the telescope to take wide-field images. With autumn comes the appearance of Andromeda, and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), so this was a prime target. Here is an image that came out of it:

Seven images were stacked to produce this image. Despite it being at a distance of 2.5 million light-years from Earth, the Andromeda Galaxy can actually be seen with the naked eye from a dark location. In the autumn season, go outside after sunset and look high in the eastern sky for a big square of relatively bright stars. This is Pegasus. To the north (left) of Pegasus is Andromeda, appearing in the image below as the flying horse's back legs:

The light blue oval above Andromeda is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Looking right at it makes it difficult to see, so you may need to avert your eyes to the side just a bit and look for a faint fuzzy. That faint fuzzy is light that has been traveling for 2.5 million years to be absorbed by your eyeballs. Let that sink in!