The Andromeda Galaxy

This is the Andromeda galaxy.  This is what our galaxy looks like.  But it is not us, it is our sister galaxy.  But if you were in the Andromeda galaxy and looked back at the Milky Way galaxy we would look like this!  For the photographers out there, this was taken with a 200mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 3200 and an exposure time of 30 seconds, on a special mount which tracks the movement of the sky.   But you need to be under a really dark sky.  The Andromeda galaxy is is a barred spiral galaxy with diameter of about 152,000 light-years, approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth!  And it contains about one trillion stars!  The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to collide in around 4–5 billion years merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy.  It is a wonderful sight in a telescope but in long exposures through a telescope, like this photograph taken from the Negev Desert in Israel, you can see it in all its magnificence! Andromeda Galaxy in Color