Andromeda Galaxy – M31
by Mike Hankey, under Galaxies
I’ve been wanting to shoot a good picture of the Andromeda Galaxy since I got my telescope. Andromeda is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way and a very large target. Its proportionally a little larger than the full moon in the sky (no you can’t really see it with your naked eye, but if you could it would be as big as the moon). Andromeda is a hard target for larger scopes because of its size. Here’s the best picture of Andromeda I’ve been able to do yet. Its a total of 90×2 minute frames (180 minutes!) and it still doesn’t look the way I would expect it to.
January 10th, 2010 on 7:00 pm
Is it possible that you’ve zoomed in so close to the center of Andromeda that you’re leaving out the fainter arms of its spiral, and so what you’ve effectively got is a close-up of only the fuzzball at the very core?
In other words, would it help to pull back your magnification so you see the entire galaxy?
Just a thought.