![]() Two of these: M32 and M110 can be picked out with low magnification in a small-to-medium sized telescope, in the same field of view as M31. Like our own galaxy, M31 has several attendant satellite galaxies. Its bright nucleus is the hazy patch that is visible to the unaided eye. M31 has been estimated to be nearly 200,000 light years in diameter or one and a half times as wide as our own Milky Way galaxy. Here is the most distant object that can be seen with the unaided eye. It is listed as Messier ("M") 31, in Charles Messier's famous catalog: hazy objects resembling comets, but later proved to be galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. ![]() The light from that "little cloud" is actually the total accumulation of light from approximately one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) stars. It's oval because from our vantage point we're viewing it not far from edgewise, but in fact, it's a nearly circular, flat spiral assemblage of star clouds. While it will certainly look larger and brighter than with your eyes alone, there is little to suggest the grandeur of this object as it is often shown in long exposure observatory photographs. ![]() (Image credit: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) A tremendous city of starsĮven today, binoculars and telescopes reveal this "cloud" as little more than a smooth oval blur, which gradually brightens in the center to a star-like nucleus. The Andromeda Galaxy rises among the autumn constellations of the Northern Hemisphere over moonlit formations at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. He described the nebula as an indefinite glow "like a candle shining through the horn window of a lanthorn (lantern)." Galileo's rival, Simon Marius is usually credited with the first telescopic observation of this object in December of 1612. An expert on star nomenclature, Richard Hinckley Allen, once reported that it also appeared on a Dutch star map from the year 1500. But it may also have been known to Persian astronomers in what is now Iran as far back as 905 A.D., or even earlier. The Andromeda Galaxy was supposedly first noted by the Persian astronomer Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi, who described it as a "little cloud" in his "Book of Fixed Stars" in 964 A.D. With the unaided eye it appears as nothing more than an indefinite, mysterious glow a diffuse elongated cloud perhaps two or three times the apparent width of the moon. Recall that the Asimov's had the advantage of being located on shipboard in the middle of the Atlantic when they made their Andromeda Galaxy sighting not much concern about light pollution out there! But in order for you to see it requires good eyesight and a dark, crystal-clear night with no street or house lighting nearby. If you aren't familiar with these stars or the Pegasus constellation, you could always use a stargazing app to help you find the Andromeda Galaxy - but put the phone away as soon as you've located it to let your eyes adjust to the dark night sky to ensure they can take in as much light from this distant city of stars as possible. That will be your stopping place, for you will have found the Andromeda Galaxy. From there, move slowly up to a fairly bright star above Mirach and continue to run up in the same direction until you'll find the "little cloud" described by Al-Sufi, more than a millennium ago. Then move straight across to the east (left) and get the star Mirach (in Andromeda) in your field of view. Then, focus binoculars on the bright star Alpheratz, which is at the upper left corner of the Square. To find the Andromeda Galaxy, first locate the Great Square of Pegasus - a landmark of the autumn sky. Check out our guide on the best binoculars of 2023 to help you find the right optics for viewing the Andromeda Galaxy or anything else in the night sky.
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