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OBSERVING GALAXIES in ANDROMEDA As You Look Towards

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OBSERVING GALAXIES in ANDROMEDA As You Look Towards OBSERVING GALAXIES IN ANDROMEDA As you look towards Andromeda you are looking out into deep space underneath the Perseus spiral arm of our milky way. The constellation has a good density of observable galaxies. There is a group of relatively local galaxies which are less than 20 million light years away and then a big gap to the rest which are over 200 million light years away. The constellation is well place from late summer to mid-winter. M31 / M32 / M110 These galaxies are generally the first galaxies that amateur astronomers observe first. M31 is visible to the naked eye in dark skies. M31 whilst bright and large is fairly bland in appearance until you start to look a bit closer. With good conditions, the dark line of a dust lane is visible. I have to say that observing two of the globular clusters of this galaxy rank up there in my most memorable observations ever. M32 is very bright and I have seen it in binoculars as a very small bright blob. M110 can be a challenge to see with its low surface brightness. Having said that, I have seen it easily in my 80mm binoculars when the sky was transparent. NGC404 This galaxy is memorable to observe as it is close to the star Mirach and hence is known as Mirach’s ghost. It is a lovely circular low surface brightness glow that is visible with direct vision in my 10 inch reflector and was visible at low power with averted vision even with Mirach in the field of view. NGC 891 This is a very challenging object to see. Visually in my view it has a lower surface brightness than M110 and it took clear skies and the galaxy at quite a high declination before I was able to see it with averted vision in my 10 inch reflector. It was best seen with my lowest power eyepiece as it is actually quite a large galaxy. It was an easier spot in my new 14 inch reflector! NGC 529 / NGC 536 Both of these galaxies could be seen without needing to use averted vision in the same field of view in my 6 mm eyepiece. They both looked round visually. NGC 536 had a field star embedded in its halo. I could not see NGC 531 despite trying. NGC 80 / 83 Other than the M31 group this is the only other visual galaxy group I have observed in Andromeda. It is made up of two small faint circular galaxies both of which could be seen at the same time in the view of my 6 mm eyepiece. NGC 80 is the furthest away galaxy I have observed in this constellation. Its redshift data indicates it is 283 million light years away. NGC 7640 This is one of the more “local” galaxies in Andromeda. Its redshift indicates a distance of 17 million light years. At the eyepiece it is a lovely long but faint object which was only visible with averted vision. It sits in a nice star field of 16 stars in my 9mm eyepiece. NGC 982 This galaxy whilst very faint and small was notable as it had a clearly extended shape. I was not able to spot NGC 980 which is nearby despite my best efforts. NGC 753 Spiral galaxies give themselves away visually as they have an even low surface brightness appearance. NGC 753 very much met this characteristic but was a tough object to see requiring averted vision to pick up. Other observed galaxies in Andromeda NGC 252 / NGC 393 / NGC 513 / NGC 679 / NGC 687 / NGC 7831 / NGC 97 NGC 97 could be seen with direct vision. All the other galaxies required averted vision to spot. .
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