To be sure, this isnt a world-class image of our Milky Way galaxys sister galaxy; the Great Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31). It cant compete with images of M31 by Bob Gendler or Tony and Dafne Hallas. Their images of Messier 31 are built up from hours of separate exposures, but I was pleased with the image considering I used a small refracting telescope with an 80mm (3.1-inch) objective lens while under a slightly hazy sky. The exposure times for this image totals a mere 6.5 minutes. Note the dark dust lanes in the spiral arms, the somewhat bright patch which reveals a star-forming star cloud in the lower right part of the galaxys disk, and the satellite dwarf galaxies; i.e., M32 (the fuzzy star-like object below the center of M31 on the edge of spiral disk), and the oval dwarf M110 at the upper right of M31. The image is a composite of thirteen 30-second exposures using a Canon 350D DSLR @ ISO 1600.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 01:26:16 +0000