The Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31 or NGC224) is a Large Spiral Galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda. This galaxy is one of the brightest Messier objects and visible with the naked eye from dark skies. Also seen in the picture are the two satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110. This image was taken over six nights in August 2011 from the Almanzora valley in Almeria, Spain. Over the course of the six nights, eleven hours of Luminance data and four hours each of Red, Green and Blue filtered images, were combined to form an LRGB image of 23 hours in total. Although a naked eye object, and considered very bright in terms of Deep Sky Objects, photographing Andromeda is a challenging project.

The Galaxy has a large dynamic range. This means there are details that are dim, and also details that are bright. While short exposures are needed to capture the core of the galaxy, long exposures are needed to capture the extended outer halo of the galaxy. To help keep the Galaxies core detail and also capture the dim halo of the galaxy, I needed to layer in data of different exposures to control the signal range.

Note: All our prints are printed on Baryta 325g Paper, which is an excellent paper for framing. The paper is a gloss type, which gives very vivid colour views.