Here it is, my M31 image that was taken over a two night period about a week and a half ago. Along with The Great Andromeda Galaxy, two satellites of M31 are shown, M32 to the left and M110 in the lower right.
I've always been thrilled by M31; it was my first extragalactic object ever viewed in my little old paper-route refractor. It's also visible to the naked eye; in a really dark sky you can begin to appreciate just how huge it is. In the telescope, I've been able to resolve the two darker lanes as well as the bright star cluster NGC 206, which is the bluish region near the bottom left of this image.
Also evident in this image are numerous Hydrogen-alpha regions, areas in the galaxy where star formation is taking place, similar to our own Orion Nebula.
I love to observe the Andromeda galaxy, and perhaps there are observers over there who find an evening's pleasure by pointing their telescopes back towards our Milky Way galaxy; but maybe it's really not such a friendly neihbor after all, since it's generally predicted that it will eventually collide with us! See the October issue of Sky & Telescope for an interesing story about that.
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