So much for great expectation for clear nights! Must seriously consider moving to the mountains. Only a short period of clear skies expected tonight so let's keep it simple. M31 is a sister galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy and along with some smaller galaxies is known as The Local Group.
M31 is very similar in structure to our galaxy in that both are large spirals. Indeed M31 had alway been considered much the larger of the twins but recent discoveries put our own galaxy possibly 50% lager then previously believed. Not so easy to measure from the inside.
For this photo I am using the Canon Rebel/350 DSLR at prime focus. The Canon has a CLS filter that should remove skylight pollution especially from the street lights around my area. This seems to work but it tends to remove so much red that it leaves a blue hue as seen in this image. I was able to bring this more in-line with what I have in the past using a photo editing suite. Still this was an interesting effect which I will use again.
