M31 – The Girl Next Door

The Andromeda Galaxy is the the most distant thing you can see with unaided eyes. Autumn is the best period to see it along the night. This is our neighboring galaxy at a distance of 2.5 millions light-years. She is approaching our Milky Way and their are expected to collide in a few billion years.

Its apparent size in the sky is large like six full moon. There is also its satellite galaxies : M32, the smallest and closest to M31 and M110 on bottom-right on the image. The periphery of the galaxy is composed by blue young star and closer to the core the yellow star are older.

31 exposures of 1 minute for the heart and 46 exposures of 5 minutes done in two nights.
Camera : Canon EOS 1000D unfiltered
Telescope : Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor.
Mount : Takahashi EM-200 USD3.
Guiding : Orion Starshoot Autoguider on a William Optic Zenithstar 66SD refractor.
Outside temperature : 10°C
Sensor temperature : 13°C
Software : auto-guiding and acquisition with MaximDL, pre-processing with Iris, processing with photoshop.
Location : L’Epine, Hautes-Alpes, France