posted by Vern
on Mon Nov 2, 2009 02:26 pm MST
M31 or NGC 224, the Andromeda Galaxy in the constellation Andromeda is located approximately 2.5 million light years from our solar system. If you are fortunate to be at a location far from city lights next week, you may be able to see it without optical aid. It is a spectacular sight in binoculars. If sky is transparent and very dark it will nearly fill half the view. Studies by the Spitzer space telescope in 2006 suggest that it may contain a trillion stars.
Image Credit: Brian Kimball, Longmont Astronomical Society. This image has a three hour luminance and one hour each of RGB. Taken with the Takahashi FSQ106ED and the SBIG STL-11000M with Astrodon filters. Processing was done in CCDStack, MaximDL-CCD and Photoshop 6.0.