Messier 31 is also known as NGC 224 and the Andromeda Galaxy, or as the Andromeda Nebula before we knew what galaxies were. It can be seen by the naked eye in the constellation Andromeda (how appropriate!) and is our closest galactic neighbor located 2.5 Million light Years away. It is estimated that it contains abut one trillion stars - twice that of our own Milky Way.

M32 (at the top left closest to the core of M31) and M110 (at the bottom right)can be seen in the frame. These galaxies are neighbors and are, or have been, interacted with M31. M32 appears to have had a close encounter with M31 in the past and it is believed that M32 was once much larger and M31 stripped away some of that mass and triggered a period of extensive star formation in M32's core that we see the result of today. M110 is also currently interacting with M31 now.

As I shared with my first image of M31 taken about year ago, it is projected that Our Milky Way and M31 will collide in the future, forming an elliptical galaxy. Don't sweat it - it won't happen for 4.5 billion years from now…

My shortest focal length telescope is 920mm, so you would not think this would be an optimal rig for shooting something as large as M31, but why not give it a go?

So lately I have been on a kick to put more effort into my composition. Since I now have the Pegasus Astro Falcon Camera Rotator and the Framing and Mosaic tool in Sequence Generator Pro, I can lay these things out in advance and have the scope dial it in as part of the sequence.

My thought here was to frame things such that you could see the core of the galaxy but also include it's companion elliptical galaxies, M32 and M110 in the same frame.

Here are the details on this image:

90 x 150 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C

50 x 2 second Bias exposures

25 x 150 second Dark exposures bin 1x1 @ -15C

50 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..