It was a sky for the imagination.

In the early evening last week, the sky illuminating the
unaided eye was perhaps
even more illuminating to the mind's eye.

The unaided eye saw clouds framing the
Moon setting over a calm and reflective bay,
spruce trees lining the nearby shores, the Pleiades open star cluster (M45) glowing prominently in the center of the sky, the
Andromeda galaxy hovering just over the horizon on the right, and the
belt stars of Orion lined up on the left,
just below the bright orange star
Betelgeuse.

The bright star Sirius
peeked out of the trees on the far left.

The mind's eye
might further imagine, however, some of the
constellations coming to life, with Orion the Hunter taking up his sword and shield,
followed into battle by his
Big Dog
(Canis Major,
whose right eye is Sirius), and watched from across the sky by
Cassiopeia, the Queen of
Ethiopia, sitting on her Throne.

The above image was taken over
Pleasant Bay,
Maine,
USA,
and digitally merged with constellations from
Uranographicarum, drawn in the 17th century by J. Hevelius.

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This beautiful cosmic portrait
features NGC 891.

The spiral galaxy
spans about 100 thousand light-years and is seen almost exactly edge-on
from our perspective.

In fact, about 30 million light-years distant in the constellation
Andromeda,
NGC 891 looks a lot
like our Milky Way.

At first glance, it has a
flat, thin, galactic disk and
a central bulge cut along the middle by
regions of dark obscuring dust.

Also apparent in NGC 891's
ege-on presentation are filaments
of dust
that extend hundreds of
light-years above and below the center line.

The dust has likely been blown out of the disk
by supernova explosions or intense
star formation activity.

Faint neighboring galaxies can also been seen near this galaxy's disk.

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This
sharp, wide-field view features
infrared light from the spiral
Andromeda Galaxy (M31).

Dust heated by Andromeda's young stars is shown in yellow and red,
while its older population of stars appears as a bluish haze.

The false-color skyscape is a mosaic of images from NASA's new
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
satellite.

With over twice the diameter of
our Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest galaxy in
the
local group.

Andromeda's own satellite galaxies M110
(below) and
M32 (above)
are also included in the combined fields.

Launched in December 2009, WISE began a six month long infrared
survey of the entire sky on January 14.

Expected to discover
near-Earth asteroids
as well as explore
the distant universe, its sensitive infrared detectors are
cooled by frozen hydrogen.

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Andromeda

Abbreviation: And

Genitive: Andromedae

Translation: Princess of Ethiopia or the Chained Lady

Position in the Sky

Right Ascension: 1 hour
Declination: 40 degrees
Visible between latitudes 90 and -40 degrees
Best seen in November (at 9:00 PM)

Named Stars

ALPHERATZ (Alpha And)
MIRACH (Beta And)
ALMAAK (Gamma 1 And)
Adhil (Xi And)

Messier Objects

M31 The Andromeda Galaxy (spiral galaxy)
M32 Satellite galaxy of Andromeda (elliptical galaxy)
M110 Satellite galaxy of Andromeda (elliptical galaxy)

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