The Great Andromeda

After dinner and house blessing last night, I decided to chance an experience to get hold of the elusive Andromeda Galaxy that was hiding from me the past week. The skies were fortunately clear and the scene from the north/northwest was perfect to look out for it.

Using the eyepiece, first to find my way around the constellation, it was a good 10 minutes or thereabouts of scouring the sky, noting the other stars that were in the neighbourhood. Then, suddenly, like a thief in the night, the great A Galaxy suddenly appeared like magic into view - M31, aka the Andromeda Galaxy!

While it was suppose to be visible to the naked eye but because of the horrible light pollution in the sky, that wasn't discernible. However, the scope was just decent enough to show her as a faint misty patch close to the star Nu Andromedea. Using the barlow and the WA 5mm lens, it became a little clearer, or at least discernible enough to note that it is a misty patch that is almost circular.

I tried to get a picture of it with the Start Shoot but the results were not good, so I decided against keeping any. That was after several tries to focus and exposing the CCD to get a semblnace of what this galaxy looked like. *sigh* I have yet to find a proper way to do this sort of thing....

Still the sight of this galaxy was quite a humbling experience because it is the furthest object we can see in the heavens with a naked eye. The scope only further accentuate this sight! *wow!*