This is incredibly beautiful. I can almost see it turning in space.

Thank you for sharing!

That's amazing and cool!

I still remember the moment when if first saw Saturn and its rings through a telescope,
it was almost creepy, seemly so surreal

Seeing our "neighboring" galaxy directly must feel the same

If we could fully see M31 unaided in our night sky, is the arc span wide enough to resolve its form ?

This is a representation:

That is just beautiful !

Thanks for sharing

Andromeda’s collision course with the Milky Way
https://www.astronomy.com/science/andromedas-collision-course-with-the-milky-way-this-week-in-astronomy-with-dave-eicher/

I need to get my affairs in order.

That is staggering

It’s clearly oval in shape, and white, but nothing else can be resolved.

i use a zwo am5 mount. once its polar aligned with the earth axis it rotates with the earth. what i do is take a series of exposures and use software to stack teh resulting images.

an alt az mount can take short exposures but suffer from field rotation for anything longer than 30 seconds or less depending on teh location of tge object

Congrats, it is gorgeous.

And you got M110, too!

My Meade ETX will track okay like that, but it's only a 60mm backpack model.

teh equatorial mount is what makes the difference. it eliminates field rotation which an alt az mount has

(manually mind you) with the university's big reflecting telescope (naturally with an EQ mount) and then covered the piggyback SCT as class ended. The next night we had class we developed it (developer, stop-bath, fixer & wash) and then we were looking at something - not at all- printed in our Norton's Star Atlas. Turns out we were tracking Halley when it had just started to offgas but wasn't quite nekkid eye visible yet. We tracked it over several classes.

My brother-in-law does astrophotography too. Spends days after a shoot processing! Has some nice stuff too.

I've not seen a better image of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Thanks for the picture, it's outstanding.

I wish I could do that.

Beam me up Scottie!

Great shot! We are due to merge w that galaxy over 4.5 to 10 billion years from now.
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/andromeda-milky-way-galaxy-collision

You're very fortunate. Which city? DC and Alexandria have so much light pollution that it's difficult to see anything other than the brightest stars (and the moon.)

there are things you can do to help with light pollution.
for things like galaxies i use a light pollution filter that does an ok job especially on brighter objects
for nebula its a little easier. nebulas tend to emit light in only a couple very specific frequencies. there are filters that will block any light outside those frequencies.

just because you cant see objects with the naked eye they are still able to be photographed,especially the brighter objects like andromeda,orion,the pleaides etc.... I looked at a dark sky map,theres a scale called the bortle scale that show how dark the skies are. im in whats called bortle 7. for you it looks like belle view /bell haven are the same darkness as me


dark sky map
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=4.00&lat=38.7944&lon=-77.0469&state=eyJiYXNlbWFwIjoiTGF5ZXJCaW5nUm9hZCIsIm92ZXJsYXkiOiJ3YV8yMDE1Iiwib3ZlcmxheWNvbG9yIjpmYWxzZSwib3ZlcmxheW9wYWNpdHkiOjYwLCJmZWF0dXJlc29wYWNpdHkiOjg1fQ==