M 31 - Andromeda nebula
- Details
Originally cataloged as a nebula by Messier with the designation M31. Actually it is a spiral galaxy. It is our closest major galaxy neighbor , but even then it is still at a distance of 2 million light years. Our own galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are on a collision course. Not to worry though because the collision is expected over 4 - 5 billion years.
Because of the large apparent size I have chosen the Canary Two Ultra Wide Field refractor telescope for this image. In total I scheduled 16 missions, all successful. So the total exposure is 800 seconds for the Luminance channel and 320 seconds for each of the color channels. In total almost 30 minutes.
Processing is done in PixInsight.
Click on the image for a larger version