NGC 206: Starcloud in the Andromeda Galaxy M31 (original) (raw)

This giant starcloud in the Andromeda Galaxy, similar to but larger than M24, is bright enough that William Herschel has given it a separate catalog number: H V.36 (based on his observation on October 17, 1786).

Our image was obtained by Jack Schmidling with a 16-inch Newton exposed 40 minutes on Technical Pan film. From his M31 page.

Barbara Mochejska created this color image of the NGC 206 field of M31 from data of the DIRECT project, an attempt to directly determine the distances of the Local Group galaxies M31 and M33, with Cepheid and eclipsinf binary variables. The data were acquired with the F. L. Whipple Observatory (FLWO)'s 1.2-meter telescope and the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT (MDM)'s 1.3-meter telescope.