E.T. phone home (The Andromeda Galaxy)

            The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way and one of the most magnificent objects in the night sky. Visible as a faint small smudge from a dark site on a moonless night, M31 is a gigantic aggregation of hundreds of billions of stars at a distance of about 2.5 million light years.
Once thought to be a nebula inside our own Galaxy, its true nature was discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1925, which measured the distance of this "island universe" by studying a special class of pulsating stars known as Cepheids (his estimated distance was more than half smaller than the present value but still large enough to put it well outside the extent of our own Milky Way Galaxy).
M31 is classified as a spiral galaxy with its galactic plane inclined about 13o to our line of sight, and it is therefore seen nearly edge-on. It has a number of smaller satellite galaxies, the most prominent of which are M32 (the bright, star-like concentration above and to the left of the nucleus) and M110, the more extended bright patch below and to the right of the nucleus). Astronomers have found evidence of a massive black hole at the center of this galaxy (as is the case for our own Milky Way).
They have also calculated that we are in a collision course with our grand neighbor in space - approaching each other at a speed of about 100 Km/sec, the two galaxies will collide in about 3 billion years and maybe merge into a giant elliptical galaxy.
I can’t really know if E.T.’s home was the Andromeda Galaxy, but I can tell you that this galaxy is exceptional, either through a telescope or in deep sky photographs. 
I wish you all health, happiness and clear skies! 
Image Details:
Telescope: Orion EON 80/500 mm ED refractor with TS 0.79 Reducer/Corrector 
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Camera: Canon EOS 600Da
Light frames: 13 x 5 mins, ISO 800, Custom WB, no filter
Guiding: Skywatcher Evoguide 50/240 mm with Lacerta Mgen-3 autoguider
Date & Location: 13/10/2023 - Chalkidiki, Greece (Bortle 4)
Processing: PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop

   

Taken on: October 12, 2023

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