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M31_Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way and one of the most magnificent objects in the night sky. Visible as a faint small smudge from a dark site on a moonless night, M31 is a gigantic aggregation of hundreds of billions of stars at a distance of about 2.5 million light years.
Once thought to be a nebula inside our own Galaxy, its true nature was discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1925, which measured the distance of this "island universe" by studying a special class of pulsating stars known as Cepheids.
M31 is classified as a spiral galaxy with its galactic plane inclined about 13 degrees to our line of sight, and it is therefore seen nearly edge-on. It has, as our own Galaxy, a number of smaller satellite galaxies, the most prominent of which are M32 (the bright, star-like concentration at bottom right at the edge of the spiral arm) and M110, the more extended bright patch at upper left. Astronomers have found evidence of a massive black hole at the center of this galaxy (as is the case for our own Milky Way).
They have also calculated that we are in a collision course with our grand neighbor in space: approaching each other at a speed of about 100 Km/sec, the two galaxies will collide in about 4 billion years and maybe merge into a giant elliptical galaxy.
Image Details:
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Light frames: 19 x 3 mins (total: 57 mins), ISO 1600, Daylight WB, no filter
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider autoguider
Processing: DSS 3.3.4, Adobe Photoshop CS6
M31_Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way and one of the most magnificent objects in the night sky. Visible as a faint small smudge from a dark site on a moonless night, M31 is a gigantic aggregation of hundreds of billions of stars at a distance of about 2.5 million light years.
Once thought to be a nebula inside our own Galaxy, its true nature was discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1925, which measured the distance of this "island universe" by studying a special class of pulsating stars known as Cepheids.
M31 is classified as a spiral galaxy with its galactic plane inclined about 13 degrees to our line of sight, and it is therefore seen nearly edge-on. It has, as our own Galaxy, a number of smaller satellite galaxies, the most prominent of which are M32 (the bright, star-like concentration at bottom right at the edge of the spiral arm) and M110, the more extended bright patch at upper left. Astronomers have found evidence of a massive black hole at the center of this galaxy (as is the case for our own Milky Way).
They have also calculated that we are in a collision course with our grand neighbor in space: approaching each other at a speed of about 100 Km/sec, the two galaxies will collide in about 4 billion years and maybe merge into a giant elliptical galaxy.
Image Details:
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Light frames: 19 x 3 mins (total: 57 mins), ISO 1600, Daylight WB, no filter
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider autoguider
Processing: DSS 3.3.4, Adobe Photoshop CS6