This galaxy is also designated as M31, a Messier catalogued object, and as NGC 224. It is the largest galaxy in the "local group" of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It has a diameter about twice that of our Milky Way and is, like the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy. It has considerably more stars than the Milky Way, having about a TRILLION stars! It is located about 2.5 million light years from the Milky Way but getting closer by the second, as the two galaxies are approaching each other at about 80 miles per second; with an expected collision in about 2.5 billion years. It has been photographed heavily (including mine :>) since first being photographed in 1887, when, being a long duration photo, it showed the spiral structure for the first time. However, it was (as were all deep sky objects at the time) considered part of the Milky Way, being designated a "nebula." That finally changed in the 1920's when Edwin Hubble discovered a way to determine distances by using a certain type of variable brightness star. Once he could measure distance, it was obvious that M31 could not be located in our galaxy and that, indeed, it was a galaxt itself. It is visible with the unaided eye at a reasonably dark site.

Dates:
August 23 and 24, 2009
Location:
Ft. Griffin State Historic Site, Texas
Telescope:
TMB80SS f/6.3 at 504mm FL APO Triplet using a William Optics .80 GenII Reducer/Flattener
giving about f/5 with 403mm focal length
Mount:
Takahashi EM-11 Temma 2, guided by an SBIG ST-237 thru an E-finder at 100mm focal length
Camera:
Canon XSi, at prime focus; modified by Hap Griffin with the Baader filter
Camera Control and Focusing:
ImagesPlus 3.60 (IP)
Exposures:
63 at 5 minutes each; 45 imgs at ISO 800 and 18 imgs at ISO 1600; all in Raw mode
Total Exposure time:
5 hours 15 minutes
Processing:
There were three stacks of 30 imgs at ISO 800 (Aug 24), 15 imgs at ISO 800 (Aug 23) and 18 imgs at ISO 1600 (Aug 23) that were each converted, calibrated, de-bayered, normalized, aligned and Sigma combined using Automatic Image Set Processing and deconvolution in IP. The three stacks were then combined using Adaptive Add in IP.
Final processing in Photoshop CS2

Conditions were not good for an uncooled DSLR due to an average
ambient temperature of 80F (27C) over the hours when imaging this object.
However, by statistically combining the 63 images and other processing methods,
most of the heat noise was eliminated in the final image

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