Many people are unaware that you can observe a totally independent galaxy, outside our own Milky Way, with a basic pair of binoculars, or even the naked eye with good seeing. Here’s how to find Andromeda, our brightest and closest large galactic neighbour.

Finding it

Mars is well placed high and bright in the SW at the moment to help you find Andromeda. From Mars find the four stars marking the great square of Pegasus and then star hop to its rough location using my guide below. Scan this region of sky with binoculars and you should eventually see a faint glow of diffuse light. That’s Andromeda.

What you’re seeing

The Andromeda galaxy is our nearest galactic neighbour at around 2.5 million light years away. Which means when you see it, the light reaching you left Andromeda millions of years ago, a time long before human beings dominated our planet. How is it we can see Andromeda at this stupefying distance when we can only see stars within a few thousand light years? The reason is size and composition. Andromeda, just like our own Milky Way galaxy, is a vast spiral storm of stars, over 100,000 light years in diameter. The glow of light you see is from an accumulation of over one trillion stars.