Andromeda

Andromeda Galaxy
Messier-31 taken from Staffordshire, UK by Nigel Armitage in February 2025.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way.
Andromeda has a D25 isophotal diameter of about 152,000 light-years and is approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth.
The galaxy’s name stems from the area of Earth’s sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which itself is named after the princess who was the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology.

The virial mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Milky Way, at 1 trillion solar masses.

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to collide with each other in around 4–5 billion years merging to potentially form a giant elliptical galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching the Milky Way at about 68.4 miles per second, 246.240 mph.

This is one of my developing pieces of work and contains 89, 2 minute exposure  images, 3 hours of data.
I am happy with what I have here, but I feel I can do much better.
It was taken  in a Bortle 5 Sky.

The equipment used was:
Equipment Used:
Williams Optics FLT132
ASI ZWO240MC Pro OSC
Optilong L Extreem Filter
ZWO AM5

The image was processed using Siril and Photoshop.

Andromeda Constellation Map. Credit: IAU and Sky & Telescope magazine 

(Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg). License: CC 4

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