Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Friday, October 28th.  The sun will rise at 8:14.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 23 minutes, setting at 6:37.   The moon, 2 days past new, will set at 7:53 this evening.

The Great Andromeda Galaxy is the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy.  It’s visible to the unaided eye in the east off the left star of the Great Square of Pegasus.  Move left two stars and up two stars to the fuzzy spot.  That is the heart of a galaxy that’s actually 6 moon diameters wide.  It’s close too as galaxies go, only two and a half million light years away.  Andromeda appears to be be somewhat larger than our galaxy, though may be less massive than the Milky Way because our galaxy seems to have more dark matter.  It is approaching us at somewhat less than 100 miles per second, and will collide with the Milky Way in four or five billion years, about the time the sun will begin to bloat toward a red giant.  Mark those down on your calendar.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Image taken by Scott Anttila.

The Constellation Andromeda. Created using Stellarium.