THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY
M31 • Spiral galaxy • Andromeda • 2.5 million light-years from Earth
🔭
Askar 130PHQ
📷
ZWO 2600MC Pro
🌃
Bortle 8
⏱️
10 hours
🗓️
November 2022
Overview
The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way. Located around 2.5 million light years from Earth, it contains on the order of a trillion stars and spans several degrees of sky, making it the largest galaxy visible to the naked eye. Despite its size and brightness, capturing the Andromeda Galaxy in detail from light polluted skies presents its own challenges, particularly when trying to reveal faint outer dust lanes and satellite galaxies.
Background
I wanted a broadband target to test my new Askar 130PHQ, and the Andromeda Galaxy was well-placed in the sky so won the contest. Shooting at 1000mm means that the field of view is narrower than I’m used to, but I quite like the unusual framing. Maybe I’ll make a mosaic in the future to capture the whole target.
The total integration time here is just 10 hours. This is much less than I normally go for, and to be honest I was expecting to need more data, but was curious to see what I could achieve with 10 hours so went ahead with processing. The end result was so good that I decided to declare it finished. (This also frees me up for my next project, which is testing the new Askar D2 OIII/SII filter).
I binned the data x2 to achieve a good working resolution, which gave a boost to the signal-to-noise ratio. This lowered the image’s overall resolution which, after a slight crop, is 3080×2056 — still plenty for zooming in to see more detail, or making large prints. I’m actually impressed at how fast I can collect data with this set-up, even ignoring the binning aspect.
This image was used in the Winter 2023/24 issue of community magazine Up Our Street.
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Science
100 years ago, the biggest and best telescope on Earth was the Hooker 100-inch on Mount Wilson in California. It was a beast!
at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
This giant telescope was used by famous astronomer Edwin Hubble (namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope) to study the Andromeda Galaxy, although at the time people thought it was a nebula within our own Milky Way.
Hubble made history in 1923 when he discovered a Cepheid Variable star in the Andromeda Galaxy. This is the photographic plate image, along with his note VAR!, meaning Variable.
Carnegie Institution for Science
Hubble was so excited by this because Cepheid Variable stars are “standard candles”, with luminosity directly proportional to their distance from Earth. So, we can use them to accurately measure distance. Hubble realised that this particular Cepheid Variable was far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. He has shown that the Andromeda Galaxy was a star city far beyond our own. People then realised that the Universe was a lot bigger than they’d realised. For this reason, the Cepheid Variable Hubble spotted became known as “the star that changed the Universe”.
Amazingly, it’s actually possible to glimpse this special star in my photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. I find that quite mind-blowing!
Kit list
This is the equipment I used to capture the image.
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Telescope: Askar 130PHQ
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Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
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Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
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Guidescope: William Optics 50mm with ROTO Lock
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Guidecam: ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
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Control: ASIAIR Plus
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Example source data
Here are example single subframes and freshly integrated stacks, just with simple stretches applied.
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Nice picture of our nearest galaxy. I’ve got a plus in the way. I currently use Nina with a very similar setup to yours so will be interesting to compare. Just a question on the power cable setup your using. What’s the plastic surround on the jack plug and does this eleaviate the strain on the socket. I ask this because I own the Pegasus power box that has the same setup which failed and consider this to be a weak point. Happy imaging, God give me clear skies.😁
Hi Mark, thanks for your message. Do you mean the plastic surround on the power cable? It’s standard on Lynx Astro cables (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/lynx-astro/lynx-astro-mount-power-cable-for-sky-watcher-mounts.html). The surround is good as does alleviate strain, but it’s still a weak point. I wrap the power cable around the knobs on my mount to help take the stress off the socket, and that seems to work well.
That plastic surround is a high shrink ratio (3:1 or 4:1) adhesive lined heatshrink that is used to provide better strain relief, it can be added to many types of connector as a modification, you can simply cut a length that covers the connector body and a section of the wire, slide it on and heat with a hot air gun (or carefully with a lighter).
Thanks Ryan, good tip!
Hi you’ve done a great job from Bristol!
I kinda go for the starless version , I like to see it in its pure state, think I will always do both versions for all my galaxy shots , seeing a grouping of galaxies definitely looks better starless . Enhances the vastness and isolation of galaxies.
There is something special about the starless galaxy shots, I agree. And it does make it easier to see detail in the dust lanes.