Autumn Galaxies Reign in Night Sky This Week

As Earth moves in its orbit around the sun, new constellations are revealed in the east as the old ones disappear into twilight. The bright stars of Orion and his winter companions will soon replace the duller stars of the Summer Triangle.

During this period of transition, we find ourselves looking outwards from our own galaxy into intergalactic space, making it one of the two best times of the year to hunt for galaxies.

The stars of autumn are relatively faint, as we are looking out away from the disk of our galaxy. To see these fainter stars you may need to travel away from your urban or suburban home to seek out the darker skies of the countryside. [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy]

After twilight falls, look eastward to see the Square of Pegasus, formed by four second-magnitude stars about the same brightness as the stars of the Big Dipper. As the Square is rising in the east, it will appear more as a diamond than a square. The leftmost star of the diamond, Alpheratz, marks the head of Andromeda. Two streams of stars extend to the left from Alpheratz, pointing towards Perseus, just below the "W" shape of Cassiopeia.

These constellations provide the framework of relatively nearby stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, through which we look locate our neighboring galaxies beyond.

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http://www.space.com/23362-autumn-galaxies-night-sky-observing.html