The daughter of Cassiopeia and Cepheus, queen and king of Ethiopia, Princess Andromeda was renowned for her beauty.  So striking she was, in fact, that Cassiopeia unwisely boasted that she and her daughter were “more beautiful than the Nereids”, a group of sea nymphs who were known for their great beauty. 

The nymphs were enraged.  In sympathy, and as punishment for Cassiopeia's hubris, Poseidon unleashed floods and a great creature called Cetus to ravage the coast of Ethiopia. To appease the gods and protect their kingdom, Cepheus and Cassiopeia agreed to sacrifice Andromeda.  The young princess was lashed to a rock on the shore and left to be devoured by Cetus. However, the hero Perseus came along in the nick of time, defeated Cetus and rescued Andromeda.  Folks of my generation may be more familiar with the tale from the 1981 fantasy film, "Clash of the Titans", where the stop-motion Kraken was defeated by Perseus on the Pegasus with the help of Medusa's severed head.

In most versions of the story, Perseus and Andromeda were married and lived happily ever after.  Upon Andromeda’s death, the goddess Athena immortalized the princess and her story, by placing her in the night sky as a constellation.  Riding high in the skies of the northern celestial hemisphere throughout the months of Autumn, the constellation Andromeda is one of the largest and most easily recognizable.  Standing beside her husband Perseus and the Pegasus, her parents Cassiopeia and Cepheus, her story will play out in the stars, night after night for all eternity. 

The jewel of Andromeda is the galaxy M31, known as the “Andromeda Galaxy” – one of the most well-known and iconic deep sky objects.  Visible as a hazy patch to the naked eye in dark enough skies, the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, some 2.2 million light years away. 

Andromeda was the first deep sky object I ever found as a teenager, first with binoculars and then with my home-built 8” Newtonian.  Mounted in a heavy 10” PVC tube as OTA, yoked in a fork from a dental x-ray machine that my dad had bought at a surplus auction, the altazimuth mount we had assembled from scrap parts had no clutch or way to lock the bearings in either axis, and no way to adjust the friction, which led to a very jerky and imprecise experience when trying to manually “slew” and track an object.  Even so, the thrill of actually seeing the Andromeda galaxy myself -- another “island universe”, as Edwin Hubble had discovered almost exactly 100 years ago in 1923 – has never left me. 

Two years ago, when I picked up my EdgeHD 9.25”, M31 was the first deep sky object I searched for visually, followed immediately by M42.  Of course, the long f/l of the Celestron wasn't really adequate for viewing of Andromeda's jewel in all of its glory.  When I moved into imaging, my various attempts to capture the iconic object with a wider-field refractor have been less than successful: I always had trouble with processing of M31 and was disappointed with the results each time.  After a while, I kind of forgot about Andromeda and it has been some time since I have even attempted it.  Finally, early this fall, there was a break in the weather, and I captured about 8h 30m of LRGB and some Ha.   My initial attempt to process the data back in October was again disappointing -- not "Astrobin-worthy", so I again set it aside.  Finally, last week I attacked the data again in Pixinsight, with BXT and SPCC to help out.  I used NRGBCombination to blend in the Ha data with the LRGB.  I wish I had more data -- I feel the image had better potential -- but overall, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.   I'm pleased especially with the way the dazzling Ha sparkles around the galactic plane, lighting up the image with extra life.

Below is my first attempt at Andromeda Galaxy, taken on February 14, 2021 with my WO ZS73II refractor and my full-spectrum-modifed Nikon D5500 DSLR.  This was the picture where I first discovered how necessary flats as calibration frames are!  (Also that I needed to clean the sensor!)