M31 on 24 Oct 2006

This is the central portion of the Andromeda Galaxy M31 FOV 25' X 25'.



M31 taken on 0100 hrs on Oct 24 2006. This was a single 60 second Luminance exposure using a 0.4m SCT at f/5 with a Apogee AP7p CCD camera at binning 1.

There was no PEC tracking, hence the slight drift within the stars.

This was part of a number of selected images of the new IFAS AOP Supernova Search programme.

Eamonn A

Love the dust lanes Eamonn.

Very hard to capture this object. Even on the 480mm focal length Ranger I have to use a .5 reducer to get it all in the fov.

Eamonn, those dust lanes show up as a great return for 60 seconds exposure! I'd love to see what you could do with that set up for many minutes!

Keith..

Keith & Trevor,

I took 8 X 25 second exposures with a blue filter on M31 on 26 October, 2006. See 'Recent Files' M31 261006 Blue image.

The dust lanes clearly show up in the upper central region. I had to enhance that detail with some processing. Same equipment as above and FOV. I'll try longer exposures the next clear night.

Eamonn

Some nice detail in the dust lanes, is it possible that some of those "stars" are in fact globular clusters around M31 ??

Dave

M31 has more globular clusters than the Milky Way, which is possibly related to its larger stellar spheroid. Some 300 have been identified, the true number may even be more.

The cluster system in M31 resembles the galactic cluster system in many ways, but some differences exist. In particular, detailed spectroscopic studies indicate differences in the stellar populations of some clusters that were unexpected and our not yet fully understood. In addition, M31 has some blue compact clusters that must be much younger than the canonical globular cluster that is as old as the universe.

Eamonn A