Mosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy - M31, NGC224

Authors: Karel Bůna, 47 Martin Bůna, 19
Jilemnice, Czech Republic
August - November 2011

About object

In older texts we can read about it as a Big Nebula in Andromeda. It's the closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. The Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi wrote a tantalizing line about the chained constellation in his Book of Fixed Stars around 964 AD, describing it as a "small cloud". The galaxy, collectively with its companions, M32 ( big bright spot in the upper part of the image ) and M110 ( misty galaxy with visible dark structures in the bottom part of the image ), is a part of the local group of galaxies together with M33 and Milky Way.

The galaxy is approaching the Milky Way at the speed of 300 km/s and in roughly 2 billion years they will miss each other at very high velocity. The gravitational forces work perfectly and both galaxies will blend in other 3 billions years. In that time our galaxies will be totally different than we know them right now. The galaxy in Andromeda is currently, for sure, the most studied galaxy outside Milky Way. That's because we can study all the phenomena of galaxy activity, including those that are hidden in the Milky Way from our eyes due to the galaxy dust. So attention must attract the spiral structures, globular and open star clusters, interstellar dust, planetary nebulas and the supernova remnants. Besides the experts who are interested in this galaxy, many amateur astronomers, for whom astronomy is only a hobby, also find the galaxy very attractive. It belongs to the most photographed objects, after all its first protography was introduced to the world already in the end of 19th century! Therefore it's natural that it could not escape our attention.

About project

This project came on mind to my son Martin together with his project of the nebulas in Cygnus ( http://www.buna.cz/mosaic/ ) at some point in the beginning of summer 2011. We often discuss what to take photo of with our big telescope on NEQ6 and probably because he wanted me to give him a break for some time, he suggested me to create a mosaic of the galaxy in Andromeda. And because this object is accessible very well from our backyard and with the fact that we've got the luck to have better-than-average conditions, first exposures of the mosaic begun on the 1st of August, 2011. And after 17 nights during 3 months the last photons landed to camera for this mosaic at night of the 13th of November, 2011. The year 2011 was for us in terms of nights suitable for astrophotography outstanding, during these three monts we managed to create images of many other objects. In the case of the mosaic of M31 it's compounded of 15 fields, I unfortunately had to shoot two fields repeatedly due to poor blending with other neighbouring fields.

Postprocessing

Calibration and debayering in Maxim DL 5, registration and stacking in Regim. Final adjustments aswell as composition of all the fields together was done in Adobe Photoshop CS5.0.

Notice: We provide full resolution image but only on demand. Do not hesitate and request it by writing an e-mail - karel snail krakonos dot cz. Thank you for understanding.
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