How to find Andromeda galaxy

Andromeda is located north of the celestial equator, below Ursa Major and near Pegasus.

Andromeda is the easiest to watch in the autumn night in the northern hemisphere, and there are also constellations symbolizing other gods in Perseus mythology. Andromeda, because of its northern declination, can only be seen in the area north of the 40-degree south latitude line, and the area south of 40-degree south latitude will be below the horizon.

Andromeda is one of the largest constellations in the celestial sphere, with an area of 722 square degrees, which is 1400 times of the full moon, 55% of the largest Ophiuchus and more than ten times of the smallest Southern Cross.

The brightest star in Andromeda (Andromeda α) is a pair of conjoined stars, which can be classified as part of Pegasus. General Yi Tian (Andromeda γ) is also a pair of bright stars, which are favored by amateur astronomers. Mirach (Andromeda β) is darker than Areopatra and belongs to the red giant. The naked eye can see that it is red.

The naked-eye Andromeda galaxy (messier 3 1) is the most obvious deep-space object in Andromeda. It is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and one of the brightest messier objects. Some dark galaxies, including companion galaxies M 1 10 and M321,the blue snowball nebula that can be observed by telescopes and NGC 89 1 farther away are all within the range of Andromeda.

Extended data:

Andromeda is far away from galactic plane, so it doesn't contain any open clusters and bright star clouds in the Milky Way. Because it is not covered by dust, gas and dense stars of the Milky Way, many distant galaxies in Andromeda are visible to the naked eye. The most famous deep space object is Andromeda galaxy.

On a cloudless night, a fuzzy dark light can be seen in the north of Andromeda, which is the Andromeda galaxy. Its apparent size on the celestial sphere is 192.4 times 62.2 arc minutes, and its apparent magnitude is 3.5, making it one of the brightest deep space objects in the northern sky. Andromeda galaxy is 2.2 million light years away from the earth (another estimate is as high as 2.5 million light years), and it is one of the farthest celestial bodies visible to the naked eye.

Through a larger telescope, we can see some of its structures, for example, its core is particularly bright, and the brighter it gets toward the center, we can also see some spiral arms, black dust lines, globular clusters and star clouds. In addition, we can also see its two dwarf companion stars, a small, round and dense elliptical galaxy M32 located in the south of M3 1 core.

Another elliptical galaxy, M 1 10, is slightly darker than M32 but larger and longer, and is located in the northwest of M3 1. There are also many dim stars in the Milky Way that fill this sky area, adding fascinating colors to the Andromeda Nebula.

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-Andromeda strain