Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, November 13th.  The sun will rise at 7:36.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 40 minutes, setting at 5:16.   The moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 11:36 this evening.

The Great Andromeda Galaxy that we amateur astronomers usually call M31 is the closest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy.  It is actually visible to keen-eyed observers to the naked eye.  To locate it, first find the Great Square of Pegasus, 4 stars high in the south that make a pretty good square.  From the top left star, Alpheratz, direct your gaze to the first two stars in a slightly curved line to the left to Mirach.  Then go two stars up.  The last one is a bit dim.  But just to the upper right of that last star is a little fuzzy spot.  That is the core of the Great Andromeda Galaxy.  In binoculars it looks elongated.  Photographs show the galaxy to span 6 Moon widths.  It is somewhat larger than our galaxy and will collide with the Milky Way in about 4 billion years.

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

Addendum

Great Andromeda Galaxy finder chart. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.

The Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31) as seen in binoculars. Visually even in a telescope the hub of this galaxy is all that is seen. However it also can be seen with the naked eye. My photograph.

The Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Satellite galaxy M32 is located at the edge of the disk at 9 o’clock, and another, M110 is located at 5 o’clock.  Both can be seen in telescopes, but some distance from the core of M31 and seen visually.  Image taken by Scott Anttila.