Once again, the summer begins to wane, the astronomer begins to wax.

After the glorious sunshine and endless days, it's hard to know why us amateur astronomers rue the daylight so much, but as our planet begins to lean once again away from our stellar parent, I have dashed out eagerly at the first sign of a dark night. Well, it was frankly too soon. Well past midnight it was before the warm blue gave way to a hint of velvety black and little did it last. After setting up the equipment and waiting for what seemed like interminable hours, I once again turned my telescope upon the familiar disc of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. To my chagrin, whilst the sky was at least dark enough, our next door neighbour lingered tantalizingly behind a tree! Undeterred, I began to take images blindly, but initially to no avail. Then, just as I was beginning to fear that the great mass of stars would remain concealed for the duration of the short night, my camera began to return tentative images of a nebulous cloud appearing betwixt the branches of the offending pine. Soon, mercifully, our magnificent cosmological companion drew itself out from the foliage, and was lofted into the darkness before the waiting astronomer. Almost cathartically I began snapping away. Too long it had been since I had wondered among the stars, my nocturnal subjects remaining hidden by the glare of the sun for several months beforehand. But to my delight now, finally I was able to catch a glimpse of those billions of stars in the adjoining neighbourhood. Andromeda had risen.

Having visited this target before I was keen to make improvements to my old data, and whilst the images on the computer screen were promising, I doubted my own ability to make good use of them. Steep is the learning curve of the astrophotographer, and too often have I gasped in frustration at its complexity. Would I once again discard my data in despair, or would I finally capture an image of which I could be proud?

Mercifully, it seems to be the latter, in part at least. Having had endless software issues (hint: if you use a Canon 1100D and DeepSkyStacker, make sure you download the beta version of the software.), hardware glitches and a general lack of time, it has actually been some days since I captured the data from which tonight I composed my final image, yet finally, against the odds, here it is:

© Guy Stimpson 2013. M31 taken on 6th July 2013 using a Canon 1100D on a 150mm f4 Newtonian mounted on an NEQ6. 30 exposures of 90 seconds stacked and processed in Deep Sky Stacker.

Once again I am delighted to be able to show you the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest major cosmological companion. As autumn approaches, you can see this celestial jewel with your own eyes (though it may be considerably harder to see for you than for a camera). Look up to Cassiopeia (who looks like a large W to the north-west) and follow the point of its rightmost segment. You may see, if you're lucky and have good eyesight, a faint smudge out of the corner of your eye. This will be M31. Our sister galaxy, it will collide with us one day, billions of years from now. In fact, a recent paper suggests that such a cataclysmic event may have already taken place, some three billion years ago. Whether or not this has happened is unclear for now, but what is overwhelmingly evident is the beauty of this great collection of stars, and the meaning we can glean from casting our eyes upon its dusty lanes and graceful clouds. Once, it was believed that the Earth was at the centre of a small universe containing only the Earth and the rest of the solar system. Now we can see that we are merely a blip, a tiny dust grain in a colossal ocean of stars among many such bodies strewn endlessly over eternity. In some way at least, we are not alone.