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.
I photographed Andromeda from my Bristol back garden in November 2022 with my Askar 130PHQ. In 2026, I went back to the same 10 hours of data and reprocessed the image.
One tiny point of light in the photo is the star that changed the Universe. A century ago, Edwin Hubble studied it with the largest telescope in the world. You can pick it out in this image.
I was looking for a broadband target to test my new Askar 130PHQ, and Andromeda was in just the right part of the sky. At 1000mm, the galaxy spills out of the frame, but I quite like how the tighter view draws your eye to the dust lanes.
If you’re planning your first go at Andromeda, my autumn targets for beginners guide has some tips on framing it.
Andromeda in Up Our Street
The original version appeared in the winter 2023/24 issue of the community magazine Up Our Street.
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Explore the field
Objects in this field 3 objects
3 objects
No matching objects.
- Andromeda GalaxyM 31
- GalaxyAlso catalogued as NGC 224
- M32M 32
- GalaxyAlso catalogued as NGC 221 · Arp 168
- NGC 206
- Stellar association
About the labels and credits
Positions and outlines are calculated from a plate solution of this photograph. Outlines are catalogue guides and may not follow every visible filament. Additional catalogue objects may be faint or indistinct in this exposure.
Plate solving and annotation data: SkySolver, by Dominik Sito. Stars: Gaia DR3 and Hipparcos (ESA). Deep-sky data: OpenNGC © Mattia Verga (CC BY-SA 4.0), SIMBAD and VizieR (CDS). Names: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and IAU WGSN. Catalogue overlay adaptations, including styling and selected display names, are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph © Lee Pullen.
Science
When Edwin Hubble studied Andromeda in 1923, he used the largest telescope in the world, the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson in California. It was a beast! At the time, many astronomers thought Andromeda was a nebula within our own Milky Way.
Hubble made history in 1923 when he identified a Cepheid variable star in Andromeda. He marked it “VAR!” for “variable” on the photographic plate.
Hubble was so excited by this because Cepheid variable stars are “standard candles”. The time a Cepheid takes to brighten and fade tells us how much light it gives off. By comparing that with how bright the star looks from Earth, we can work out how far away it is. Hubble realised that this particular Cepheid Variable was far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. He had 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”.
You can pick out that same star in my photograph. The crosshairs mark Cepheid V1.
Imaging details
- Total exposure
- 10 hours
- Dates captured
- November 2022
- Location and sky
- Bristol, UK (Bortle 8)
Equipment and software
- Telescope
- Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph
- Camera
- ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
- Mount
- Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
- Guiding
- William Optics 50mm + ZWO 120MM Mini
- Control
- ASIAIR Plus
- Software
- PixInsight, Lightroom
- Image by
- Lee Pullen
Exposure by filter
No filter
- Channels
- RGB
- Subframes
- 300 × 2 minutes
- Integration
- 10 hours
View subframe and stack
Single subframe and integrated stack, both with a simple stretch applied.
Processing walkthrough
In this PixInsight walkthrough, I show how I processed the RGB data from my one-shot colour camera to make the image at the top of this page.
2022 original and 2026 reprocess
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
Read my review
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Buy from High Point Scientific
Guidecam: ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
Read my review
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Control: ASIAIR Plus
Read my review
Buy from Astroshop.eu
Buy from High Point Scientific
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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.