The Andromeda Galaxy is an immense island of nearly 200 billion stars floating 2.52 million light-years away from our home galaxy. Together with M33, the Milky Way and a handful of dwarf galaxies, M31 is in the local cluster of galaxies. M31 is moving toward our galaxy and should interact (collide) with it in about 3 billion years.
This image was taken from White Sands National Monument (New Mexico) through a Celestron NS11 equipped with a Hyperstar 3. A Canon 350 (modified) was used to acquire the images.