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I put off the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) for a long time. Not because it is hard to find — but because from Germany it only becomes properly visible again towards the end of the year. This time I did not want to miss that window.
What is the Andromeda Galaxy?
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is our nearest large neighboring galaxy. It lies about 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda and, from very dark sites, is even visible to the naked eye as a faint smudge. Together with its companions M32 and M110 it is the closest large island universe — and one of the few you can actually photograph as a complete system.
My Image
What I Learned
I took this image with the Seestar S30 Pro from the outskirts of Oldenburg. The sky there is not particularly dark — and a single Seestar field is not enough for M31. So I used mosaic mode to get the whole galaxy into one frame. The exposure time was correspondingly long.
What made the night even harder: satellites. Many individual frames had to be discarded because more and more trails ran through the image. What remains is a picture that took more patience than most of my other shots.
Personal Conclusion
M31 was not a quick target for me. It was a mosaic, a long integration, and a lot of rejected frames. That is exactly why I like the image: the entire Andromeda Galaxy, from the edge of town, in one frame.