How can i find andromeda

Look between Pegasus and Cassiopeia for a smudge. The Andromeda Galaxy lies between the Pegasus constellation and the point of Cassiopeia. It should look like a blur or a hazy oval in the sky. Draw a line through the Mirach and Mu Andromedae stars. Start at the star on the upper left-hand corner of Pegasus. The constellation Andromeda begins here. Follow Andromeda down two stars. You should see two stars stacked on top of one another called Mirach and Mu Andromedae.

If you draw a line through the two stars and extend it past Mu Andromedae, you should run into the Andromeda Galaxy. It is also the star closest to the Andromeda Galaxy.

Look for the companion galaxies. If you are using a telescope, you may find two faint fuzzy spots beside the galaxy. One of them, M32, is smaller in size and closer to the actual galaxy core. The other, NGC , is larger in size, and farther from the actual galaxy. Both are companion galaxies to Andromeda. Method 2. Start by locating the galaxy with your naked eye.

You can see the Andromeda Galaxy without any special tools. It will look like a faint, fuzzy oval in the night sky. Once you have found the area of the sky where the galaxy is located, it may be easier to find it with binoculars or a telescope. Use binoculars for a closer look. Binoculars will give you a closer look at the galaxy. Once you find the galaxy with your eye, bring the binoculars up slowly, and adjust your view until you can find the galaxy.

It should look like an oval cloud when viewed through binoculars. The best binoculars to use have 7x50, 8x40, or 10x50 lenses. Use a telescope for a more detailed examination. A typical 8 inches 20 cm reflector telescope will let you see nucleus or center of the galaxy as well as its two companion galaxies.

The galaxy is so large that you may not be able to see the whole thing at once using your telescope. While the Andromeda Galaxy appears quite small to the naked eye, it will appear very large when using a telescope. Method 3. Look for the Andromeda Galaxy in fall or winter. In the Northern hemisphere, the best time to view the Andromeda Galaxy is between August and September. In the southern hemisphere, you can see it between October and December.

During these seasons, Andromeda will appear as soon as the sky darkens. Choose a night without a moon. The moon can also dim your view of the stars. You will have the clearest view of the Andromeda Galaxy if you go out during the new moon or a crescent moon. A new moon occurs once a month. Use an online lunar calendar to find the best night for stargazing this month. Check the weather for a cloudless evening.

Any clouds in the sky will obstruct your view of the stars. Look at weather reports before you head out to make sure that there will be no cloud cover. You should be able to see it in Egypt, but it may be easier to see it in the northern parts of the country than in the southern areas. Not Helpful 3 Helpful It can be seen from anywhere in the northern hemisphere. Not Helpful 12 Helpful The Great Square of Pegasus is a famous site in night skies and is highlighted in orange on the image below.

Note the location of the constellations of Cassiopeia and Andromeda and Andromeda Galaxy. Travel along the bottom one, i. Follow the line from Mirach to Mu Andromedae. Full details are shown in the SkySafari 6 image below, which you can click to give a full-screen version. The galaxy is only 1. You may even get them both in your eyepiece if you have a wide field of view and low magnification.

One of the hardest things about locating the Andromeda Galaxy for the first time is knowing what to expect when you see it. It is the most distant object visible to the naked eye, but it only appears as a hazy patch of light in the sky, about as wide as the full moon would be. The more light you can gather, the more detail you see, meaning larger scopes designed for deep space viewing give better results.

However, any telescope will reveal the mist of stars in M31 if you have a dark sky. If you can, try and get away from light-polluted areas, which will obscure the edges of Andromeda and leave you only able to see its core.

Light pollution includes moonlight, so pick an observing time when the Moon is below the horizon. But where to begin? The method most amateur astronomers use to find objects in the sky is called starhopping.

This involves navigation from bright, easily seen objects, stars, to faint, hard-to-see objects, such as galaxies. To understand how this works, let? There are several tools which will help this process. The first is a good star chart, such as this one produced by Starry Night. The difficulty with all star charts is that they represent the skies on a much smaller scale than the real thing, and beginners often find it difficult to relate the stars they see to the chart on paper.

For example, The Square of Pegasus, in the lower right of this chart, is much larger in the sky than it appears on the chart. It helps to print out star charts on a large scale. An absolute essential is a good dark sky.

Did you know that the Andromeda Galaxy is set to collide with our own Milky Way galaxy in the distant future? Find out more in our guide to the Andromeda-Milky Way collision.

The Andromeda Galaxy looks great through smaller telescope of, say, 4 inches in diameter. The galaxy appears as a larger, elongated oval shape with a core that shows up as a slightly brighter area. The fainter spiral arms sit outside the core. A low power shows the galaxy off best. Imagine a diagonal from the southwest to northeast corner lower-right to upper-left as seen from the UK , and extend it for about the same distance again to reach mag.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a staggering 23 billion billion km away. When you consider that most of the stars we see are just tens or hundreds of lightyears away, the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy becomes phenomenal.

This is about the farthest thing in the Universe that you can see using just your eyes. Another amazing aspect becomes apparent when you photograph the Andromeda Galaxy : its enormous extent in the sky, spanning then width of six full Moons side-by-side.

Take our tour of the Andromeda Galaxy below with your telescope and discover its most intriguing sights.