Andromeda Galaxy through binoculars

[Ad Astra]

Hi Folks!

Pegasus and Andromeda are rising higher at a reasonable hour - and these two constellations offer great practice for those learning to use binoculars for astronomy!

Star hopping is one of the key skills a binocular astronomer needs to learn - and Andromeda and Pegasus offer you a great opportunity.

Begin with the "Great Square" of Pegasus - the star in the easternmost corner is Alpharatz - this star is also the tip of the "horn" of Andromeda. Use your bins to trace out the southern and northern arcs of the 'horn' of Andromeda. You will find the Andromeda Galaxy above the uppermost arc of the horn shape.

Locating the fuzzy shape of the core of Andromeda's Galaxy is easy enough, but detecting the direction of the elliptical shape is harder (dark skies are a must!). Try sweeping the bins slowly back and forth past Andromeda - motion will help your eyes pick up faint structure that is not visible if you hold the bins still. This has to do with the hardware of your eyes and brain, which are evolutionarily programmed to pick up objects in motion easier than those that sit still!

Can you detect the dwarf companion galaxy that orbits Andromeda? This is a great challenge with binoculars!

Once you have located the galaxy and sketched its location - try to verify its position later with Stellarium. How close did you get to the true position??? If you are math-oriented, you can use Stellarium (turn on the Alt-Az Grid from the bottom menu) and use Pythagorean Theorem to find your position error in degrees.

If you have nailed the position within 2-3 degrees - congrats! You did a great job sketching and recording the sky!

Dan

Lab #12 - The Andromeda Galaxy.doc

[Quatermass]

Great advice many thanks

[Nova]

Thats great thanks Dan........Still not recieved that email yet

[MikeWilson]

Thanks for the lab, I didn't think to pan to help pick up targets visually. Nice tip!

[deebster]

Thanks Dan

[Ad Astra]

Really glad you folks are enjoying the lab. We were going to go out Wednesday night, but it was in the low 40's (5 C) and very windy. I'm a hardy fellow from the northern midwest (winters back home can reach -30 C), but you would have though I was trying to kill all my southern California students from the whining and complaints!!! (Parents, too!) So lab was cancelled on a perfectly clear night!

Dan