In the constellation of Andromeda lies the most prominent member of our Local Group of galaxies, M31 (NGC224). This galaxy is similar in nature to our own Milky Way but is 1.5 times as large and lies at a distance of 2.2 million light-years.

The above picture was taken on the 24th October 2008 using a Celestron NextStar 102 SLT with a Fujifilm S2 digital SLR camera. The frame is a combination of 3 x 1 minute exposures at ISO 200. Only the brighter parts of the central region of this galaxy are seen in this picture - the spiral nature of this object does not show up in this short exposure. North is in the direction of the top left-hand corner of the image.

The 3 exposures were begun at 20:19 BST and dark frames were taken at the beginning and end of the frames. Also, 3 x 1 minute "sky" frames were taken which were combined successfully (using a median filter) into a single smooth average sky frame. The average dark and sky frames were then subtracted from the average galaxy image and the results were processed using levels in Photoshop. This is the first time I have been able to achieve a flat image that doesn't show significant vignetting.

There are also two other satellite galaxies of M31 that can be seen in this image - M32 (NGC221) and NGC205 (sometimes called M110). The former is the yellow object to the right of and below M31 and the latter is the faint smudge near the top centre of the image. They are both small elliptical galaxies that are gravitationally bound to M31.