One more from my backyard with the WilliamOptics SpaceCat 51...

One more from my backyard with the WilliamOptics SpaceCat 51 refractor and the ZWO ASI071MC camera: the grandest of the galaxies, Andromeda, M31. Of course, there are millions of incredibly beautiful and strange—and even downright bizarrely structured galaxies out there in the universe, many within normal telescope distance, but in my opinion they don’t come close to M31. You could argue the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is in the running because it is so perfectly positioned from our perspective, a wonderful top-down view of a spiral galaxy. But Andromeda is like the Platonic ideal of a spiral galaxy. M31 also happens to be our largest galactic neighbor. So at 2.5 million lightyears away, it’s close by. It’s also much larger than M101, with a trillion stars and a hundred thousand lightyear diameter. This is probably one of the first objects an astronomer or astro-imager in the northern hemisphere is going to view or capture. You can see it without a telescope on a clear dark night. Andromeda Galaxy was first documented by astronomer ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in 964. He described it as a “nebulous smear” in his famous Book of Fixed Stars, which is exactly what it looks like without a telescope—and if you know where to look. It’s in the constellation Andromeda, so that should get you pointed in the right direction if you’re inclined. Note: This image is a combination of RGB color and near-infrared frames I captured earlier this year and late last year. I’m just getting around to processing them!