Andromeda Galaxy - M31

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy. This galaxy, the nearest to us, is around 2.5 million light-years away. It is 130,000 light years across and is approx 3 degrees by 1 degree. The small fuzzy blob above and right of centre in this image is a companion galaxy M110 and the even smaller blob below centre is the companion galaxy M32.

 

This image was taken on the evening of 27th September 2011. It consists of 11 x 10 minute subs (=1hr 50min) with a Canon 40D DSLR through a William Optics Megrez 90 telescope. The resulting subs together with darks and flats were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Photoshop CS2

Conditions were fairly damp and misty but is still some improvement over previous attempts.