Messier 74 (NGC 628) is a spiral galaxy out of the top-drawer. This far-flung island universe yields awe-inspiring images, its sweeping spiral arms being presented in the ‘grand-design’ manner.
Messier 31, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, is the closest major galaxy to our Solar System and the dominant galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies, larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Fomalhaut (alpha [α] PsA), the principal star of Piscis Austrinus, the ‘Southern Fish’, and the eighteenth-brightest star in the heavens, is the most southerly first-magnitude star visible right across the UK.
Messier 2 is probably the best globular cluster of the late-summer/early autumn sky, being a big and bright telescopic target that can also be swept up through 10 x 50 binoculars.
Longer autumnal nights are taking over from more balmy late-summer evening. Behold the grand appearance in September’s late-evening southern sky of the Great Square of Pegasus