Is the Andromeda Galaxy visible from Earth?

In my line of business—trying to spread the word about science and trying to grind anti-science under my heel—I post a lot of articles with the word “no” in the title. “No, There's No Proof of a Giant Planet in the Outer Solar System”, “No, Mars Won't Be as Big as the Moon. Ever. read more

The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31 or NGC 244, has an apparent magnitude of 3.44 making it easily visible by the naked eye on Moon-less nights even in moderate light pollution. The brightest stars in the sky are about magnitude zero and the ancient scale went down to magnitude six which is a good proxy for the limit of naked eye visibility in dark skies with the best seeing conditions. read more

Most people find the galaxy by star-hopping from the constellation Cassiopeia, which is a very noticeable M- or W-shaped pattern on the sky’s dome. I learned to find the Andromeda galaxy by star-hopping from the Great Square of Pegasus, to the two graceful streams of stars making up the constellation Andromeda. read more

After all, Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away—25 quintillion kilometers * (15 quintillion miles)! It’s about 140,000 light years across (the Milky Way is about 100,000 for comparison), so even at that forbidding distance it takes up a noticeable amount of real estate in our sky. read more