M 31




The Great Andromeda Galaxy


About this Object

M31 is the famous Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large neighbor galaxy, forming the Local Group of galaxies together with its companions (including M32 and M110, two bright dwarf elliptical galaxies), our Milky Way and its companions, M33, and others. It was longly believed that the "Great Andromeda Nebula" was one of the nearest nebulae. William Herschel believed, wrongly of course, that its distance would "not exceed 2000 times the distance of Sirius" (17,000 light years); nevertheless, he viewed it at the nearest "island universe" like our Milky Way which he assumed to be a disk of 850 times the distance of Sirius in diameter, and of a thickness of 155 times that distance.

More informations are available at the seds.org website


Technical Data

Optics

130 mm f/6.4 Astro-Physics EDF Refractor with TCC 0.75

Mount

Astro-Physics AP 1200QMD + Astro-electronic FS2 goto

Camera SBIG ST-10XE.
Filters SBIG CFW8A.With Astrodon LRGB Ha filters
Focuser Robofocus focuser and Focusmax software
Dates 7,8&9 October 2005.
Location Lentin Observatory
Exposure Mosaic of 3 frames. each frame is a LRGB of 60:50:50:50minutes.L=180" bin1,RGB=450" bin2. scale 2.09^s/pixel. total exposure time 630mn
Acquisition MaxIm DL 4, TheSky 6,
Processing MaxIm DL 4, Photoshop CS, Registar, Neat Image.


All content are copyright Antoine Vergara