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The Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest object you can see with the naked eye. It is also a very rewarding object through a telescope, especially with a wide-angle eyepiece. For a real treat, jump at the chance to view the Andromeda Galaxy through astronomy-grade night-vision goggles. Tease: The Andromeda Galaxy is about 10 times bigger than the full moon, and its extent is visible in the infrared.

One of the technical challenges in this image is balancing the delicate (and dim) features of the galactic disk, versus the much brighter galactic nucleus. An unexpected surprise was the Starlink satellite that photobombed my image. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I did not take enough exposures to digitally erase the satellite track.

This is a color image. I used four different filters (Red, Green, Blue, and Luminance) and combined the resulting images with special software, the excellent AstroPixelProcessor suite.