APOD 3.3

Located in the constellation Andromeda, m31 is the most distant object visible to the unaided eye. The Andromeda Galaxy is some two and a half million light-years away, which is outside the reaches of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Spanning over 200,000 light-years, this huge spiral galaxy is seen as a faint, nebulous cloud, even without the use of a telescope. This telescopic digital mosaic shows the bright yellow center, dark dust, long blue spiral arms, and star clusters can all be seen. In another image of m31, the moon and m31 are compared in angular size, and m31 is clearly much larger. The moon covers about 1/2 degree of the sky, which is no comparison to the amount m31 spans. This is a pretty incredible picture. It is truly amazing how large this galaxy is, and the fact that you can see an object outside our own galaxy is unbelievable.