Andromeda 'discovered' in the night sky over East Lothian.



What a cheek! But having stumbled on the fabulous sight of a galaxy last week, which initially caught my eye because it looked like a curious smudge, I started writing a poem ( as you do) trying to capture the feel of the night. As a non-astronomer I tried to describe where the galaxy was located and remembered that Cassiopeia was visible nearby so included a reference in the poem. It was only a few days later that I googled 'galaxy east of Cassiopeia' and immediately came up with Andromeda on the earthsky.org website (see link).

I highly recommend taking out a pair of binoculars on a clear night and if you can find Cassiopeia, the big W shaped constellation and go right and down using the W as a directional arrow,you should find it. The smudgy effect seems to be caused by the effect of billions of stars in the galaxy some of which you'll see even with low strength binoculars.

A further discovery was that in Greek mythology, Andromeda's mother was Cassiopeia whose boasting about her daughter's beauty caused Andromeda to be chained to a rock as prey to a sea monster. Fortunately Perseus rescued the princess and they were later married.

Don't you just love where poetry takes you!

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