Dave Robitaille’s beautiful capture of the popular Andromeda Galaxy wins our Photo of the Week on October 15, 2021.

Also known as Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away, one of the farthest objects visible with the naked eye. Tucked in beside Andromeda are Messier 32 (the bright glow to the centre-left) and Messier 110 (to the lower right). M32 is a dwarf “early-type” galaxy, and M110 is a dwarf elliptical galaxy — and both are satellite galaxies of Andromeda.

“It’s a competent, well-framed shot with good dynamic range and detail,” said one of the judges.

Robitaille captured two hours of exposures of the galaxy on October 5, 2021, using a ZWO ASI2600MC Pro and a Celestron RASA 11 (f/2.2). Shooting from Bortle 2 skies in Saint-René-de-Matane, Québec, Robitaille said he captured luminance, red, green and blue data and only used an infrared cut filter.

“It is amazing what a fast telescope can do in only two hours of integration compared to the f/5 or f/6,” Robitaille wrote.

Gary Colwell’s image of Barnard 150 — the Seahorse Nebula — got a nod from our judges as the honourable mention this week.

Barnard 150 is a dark nebula located in Cepheus. The nebula is a part of the Milky Way molecular cloud, and is located about 1,200 light-years away from the Solar System. Within the nebula, low mass stars are forming from collapsing cores only visible at long infrared wavelengths.

Colwell captured the image from the Splitrock Observatory in North Frontenac, Ontario. Using a ZWO ASI294MC Pro and a Celestron RASA 11, he captured 2.5 hours of data on July 6, 2021.