A year after taking up astronomy as a hobby, at the behest of my elder daughter I started this blog in 2014.  Describing the objective and content of the blog I adopted the strapline “A personal discovery of the Universe through astronomy and astrophotography”, which could also be described as a journey.  In reality it’s been an adventure consisting of two threads: the knowledge and related science of astronomy and the challenge of astrophotography.   As we on Earth pass through space whilst at the same time rotating 360^o each year around the sun our view of the night sky changes month-by-month, inevitably returning to the same perspective each 365-days.  Against this background I therefore often return to certain objects every few years hopefully armed with new astrophotography skills in pursuit of an even better image.

Following such a path I’ve already imaged M31 the Andromeda Galaxy on four separate occasions since 2015, each time enthralled by the majesty and beauty of this barred spiral galaxy.  Notwithstanding, it was clear to me that there was significant scope for improvement of the previous images with both better data and processing. Since the last attempt in October 2019 a myriad of positive developments have taken place of which perhaps three stand out: multi-star guiding, the purchase of Chroma filters and in particular the use of PixInsight image for processing – all have been game changers, so much so that reprocessing that image now also looks good – see below.

 However, whilst the said progress has already been transformative to my astrophotography during the past year, inevitabky it is imaging conditions that play the most critical role, especially in England.   Fortunately during this autumn in both October and November for once the new moon coincided with clear skies, providing no less than six nights over which I was able to obtain almost 12-hours of some of perhaps my best ever data.  Based on this I’ve been careful to apply my best new processing skills and am thankful that the final HaLRGB image has turned out very well.  In particular, the dust lanes stand out against the bright core and surrounding blue intergalactic dust and gases, which are themselves punctuated by the bright red regions rich in Ha light. 

In the blogs that accompanied previous Andromeda images I’ve often referred to the galaxy as a neighbour of the Milky Way but really we are part of the same family known as the Local Group.  Some 10-million light years in diameter, more than 30 galaxies form two collections around the two largest galaxies of Andromeda and the Milky Way.  Gravitational forces play the central role in controlling this group, especially Andromeda which is itself moving towards the Milky Way at about 70 miles per second and is destined to merge in about +/- 4 billion years; recent studies indicate that an outer halo of stars extending up to 2-billion light years from Andromeda may be in the influence of the galaxy, suggesting this event may already have started!

Thereby my personal journey of astrophotography is set to continue somewhat in parallel with that of Andromeda, which will I am sure lead to further hopefully even better images of this exciting deep sky object that is perfect for my equipment – after all we’re getting closer at the rate of 2,207,520,000 miles each year!