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Jelieta Walinski Ph.D
Medicine Rock State Park
08/01/2022
08:35 pm

Equipment Details:

Optics: Celestron Nexstar Evolution 9.25 235mm f/10 Schmidth Cassegrain Telescope
Mount: Sky Watcher EQ-6R PRO Computerized Equatorial Mount - S30300

Post-processing Details:

100 light frames
256 dark frames
256 bias frames
256 light frames

The images were stacked in deep sky stacker, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

Image Details:

The amazing galaxy is M31, my first love. M31 or Andromeda galaxy, or Messier 31, or NGC 224 and is orginally Andromeda Nebula. It is in the constellation of Andromeda. This galaxy is 2.537 million light years from Earth. It is the nearest major galactic neighbor to the Milky Way and of course it is visible from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere due to it brightness. It has a diameter of 220,000 light years, and its mass is equal to 1,230 billion suns. As scientists predicted this galaxy will eventually colide with our home galaxy the Milky Way in about 5 billion years. The recent measurement of the halo that the collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies shows that it already started.

Before when I was not able to use telescope yet I used my regular camera to capture this spectacular galaxy until the time that my husband gifted me a telescope. So even though you don't have the exact gear you can still photograph this huge galaxy so go out there chase this beauty because it won't chase you back.