| Yes, you can see a few other galaxies without using a telescope! Ournearest neighbors, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, are easy to seefrom the southern hemisphere. However, one of the most beautiful galaxieswe can see with the naked eye isvisible in the night sky all this month(November). The nearby Andromeda Galaxy, also called M31, is bright enoughto be seen by the naked eye on dark, moonless nights. The Andromeda Galaxyis the only other (besides the Milky Way) spiral galaxy we can see with thenaked eye. |
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Here is where to look during the month of November:
Start at the northeast corner of the Great Square of Pagasus - theconstellationAndromeda forms a "handle" attached to the northeast corner of the "bowl"formed by the Great Square. Find the second bright star in the handle (thelast star before the end of the handle) and from that star, make a 90degree turn to the line that joins the two handle stars, pass the firststar you see and look at the 2nd "star". It appears to be a "fuzzy star".That is the Andromeda Galaxy. Here is a star chart to help you find theAndromeda Galaxy. Note that the top of the image is north and east is tothe left side of the image.
Think about what you are really seeing:
It is a whole other GALAXY, not an object within our own Milky Way! TheAndromedaGalaxy is about 2.5 millionlight-years away and is about 200,000light-years across. It isthought to contain about 400 billion stars.
If you are lucky enough to be able to observe the Andromeda Galaxy througha smalltelescope or a good pair of binoculars, it is obvious that most of itslight comes from a verybright central core. The spiral arms of the galaxy are considerably dimmerthan thecore.
Discover more about Andromeda at:
http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m031.html
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