M31 was my first deep sky object that I ever photograph years ago and since then I was intrigue to capture those faraway photons of light. The image was captured within two consecutive nights.
During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noted the presence of several “nebulous objects” in the night sky. Having originally mistaken them for comets, he began compiling a list of them so that others would not make the same mistake he did. In time, this list is known as the Messier Catalog.
One of these objects is the famed Andromeda Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way which is named for the area of the sky it appears in (in the vicinity of the Andromeda constellation). It is the largest galaxy in the Local Group, and has the distinction of being one of the few objects that is actually getting closer to the Milky Way (and is expected to merge with us in a few billion years!).
Fun facts:
The first catalogue page of Messier’s third version from 1781 with the objects M1 to M5. Credit: Stoyan R. et al. Atlas of the Messier Objects: Highlights of the Deep Sky. — Cambridge: Cambridge Univercity Press, 2008. — P. 39.
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