Today our class attempted to form tri-color images of celestial objects. We used images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (spacetelescope.com) and used photoshop to layer them together. By using 3 different exposures, I was able to incorporate red, blue, and green aspects and merge the images to form the final project. I must admit, I have never used photoshop before and my final image is not quite what I’d like it to be. I don’t think the blue really shows through.

The subject of the photo, the Andromeda Galaxy (also known as Messier 31), is our closest galactic neighbor. In fact, the Milky Way is currently on a collision course with it. It is the only other large galaxy in our Local Group and is currently 2.5 million light years away. It contains 1 trillion stars and can be seen with the naked eye.