ANDROMEDA

Large constellation of the Northern Hemisphere situated just south of the constellation Cassiopeia and west of the constellation Perseus.  Ccntains no stars of the first magnitude but is noted as the area of sky containing the Andromeda Galaxy, a member of the local group to which our own Milky Way belongs.

 

1.      Visible in the Northern Hemisphere from August - January, and visible in the Southern Hemisphere in November.

2.      Named for Andromeda princess of Greek mythology

3.      Andromeda Galaxy both nearest major galaxy and most distant object that can be seen with naked eye.

4.      Before its nature determined by powerful telescopes, mistakenly believed to be a nebula

5.      Through telescopes seen to have two small companion galaxies of elliptical form – M32 and M110.

6.      A spiral galaxy like our Milky Way

7.      Much larger than our Milky Way  – diameter of 150,000 light years – named the Great Spiral

8.      Galaxy frequently referred to as M31 – 31st object on Messier’s list of diffuse sky objects.

9.      Takes about two million years for light to reach us from M31 – distance of 2 million light years.

10.   Much about M31 remains unknown, including why center contains two nuclei, discovered by Hubble Space Telescope in 1991.

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