M31 - Andromeda Galaxy
- TJ Connolly
- 5 days ago
- 1 min read
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31), a spiral galaxy located approximately 2.5 million light-years away. Andromeda Galaxy spans more than 220,000 light-years across and contains roughly a trillion stars — more than twice the number in our own Milky Way. If you look closely, you can spot its satellite galaxies M32 and M110, which appear as soft elliptical glows nearby.
This image was stacked and processed to reveal the faint dust lanes, glowing core, and subtle blues of the spiral arms — the combined light of billions of suns. It’s amazing to think that the photons hitting my camera sensor left Andromeda when early humans were just beginning to walk the Earth.
If you’re under dark skies like I am in the Northern Adirondacks, look for a small fuzzy patch in the constellation Andromeda, that’s this galaxy — the farthest object you can see with the naked eye.
📸 Captured with: ZWO FF65 refractor, ZWO ASI2600mc-AIR camera, ZWO AM5N mount.
114 x 180 second images calibrated with darks, flats, and dark-flats.
🌟 Calibrated and Stacked in Astro Pixel Processor
💫 Processed in PixInsight
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