We camped at Sharbot Lake Provincial Park again for Blue Skies this year. The nice thing about this part of Ontario is that the skies are exceptionally clear and free of light pollution. On our last night there, we had a completely clear sky.

Alix had been telling me about showing Susan and James where the Andromeda Galaxy was in the sky. At 2.5 million light years away, Andromeda is one of the most distant objects you can see with the unaided eye. Since the sky was so clear and dark, I decided to take a photograph of it.

I chose an extremely wide field of view so that I could get the Milky Way in the photo as well. Andromeda is quite large - larger than the full moon - but it is quite faint, which makes it difficult to see unless you know where to look. I usually find it by finding the constellation of Andromeda, which is to the right of Cassiopiea. If you hover over the image, you can see the two constellations highlighed, as well as a bonus constellation (Triangulum) and a bonus galaxy (M33 or the Triangulum Galaxy).

The Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy are the three largest galaxies in the Local Group. Andromeda is actually on a collision course with the Milky Way, heading towards us at 300 kilometres per second. The collision is expected to happen in about 4.5 billion years, after which the two galaxies will likely merge into one.

Technical Details: This shot is a "stack" of three images taken with my Canon 5D Mark II + EF 17-40L at 19mm, ISO 1600, f/4 for 30 seconds each, bringing the total exposure time to 1.5 minutes. The photos were stacked using DeepSkyStacker.

Comments

Gorgeous!