Perspectives

Title: The Andromeda Galaxy. Also known as M31, this is a barred spiral galaxy located approximately 2.5 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way and is estimated to be around 150,000 light-years across, making it one of the largest galaxies in the Local Group of galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy contains more than a trillion stars, and its mass is believed to be about 1.5 times that of our Milky Way. It is also home to a supermassive black hole at its center, which has a mass of about 100 million times that of the sun. This image was acquired as a series of fifty 5-minute images (4 hours) using red, green, and blue filters. The telescope was a Takahashi FSQ Fluorite refractor with a 106-mm aperture on a Paramount ME mount. The camera was a SBIG STL-11000M CCD, with Astrodon filters. The images were processed using PixInsight, Photoshop, and Topaz Labs Adjust AI and DeNoise AI.