Nebulous Neighbor

The numbers are mind-numbing. 2.5 million light years? One trillion stars?

This week had a run of clear, dark skies. Though I'm not in a position to travel from our Newport home, the garage roof was just fine to capture my target: M31, the Andromeda galaxy.

Our nearest galactic neighbor is also enthusiastically approaching us at a rate of 250,000 miles per hour, on track to collide after the estimated billion years it will take to cross the estimated 250 million light years between our galaxies. And this is the busy neighborhood!

I dedicated three nights to capturing images through my Redcat 71 lens with a ZWO ASI294MC Pro astrophotography camera. I alternated between 30-second and 3-minute exposures then focused on 30-second based on the results. After several hours of processing that used over 1.5 terabytes of data, I was able to produce this 61-megapixel capture of our neighbor originally named the "Andromeda Nebula" when telescopes weren't powerful enough to resolve its individual stars.

Redcat 71 / ASI294MC Pro / no filter / AM7