Andromeda Galaxy

                                                                                                                              Tamas Ladanyi (www.astrophoto.hu)

I like the Andromeda Galaxy, just a neighbor next door 2.5 million light years away that can be seen with the naked eye.  Andromeda was a lady who got chained to a rock, and was rescued by Perseus, who married her.  In this photo taken in Hungary she can be seen (as a galaxy of a trillion stars) just above the leftmost wall of the ruins.  Arched above, our very own Milky Way, Jupiter (just a planet) shining brightly to the right of the ruins, and a Perseid meteor streaking in the more local sky.  I also like the Andromeda Galaxy for being the first galaxy outside the Milky Way that we have come to know exists as such, an understanding that came only within my own lifetime.  Since then astronomers have discovered that there are about 100 billion galaxies out there in the universe---which some scientists believe is just one of an infinite number of universes in the Multiverse.  It would seem you can’t get more Far Out than that.

For more on Andromeda go to this blog’s post for November 23, 2008.