The first time I showed someone the Andromeda galaxy (M31), our conversation did not go quite as planned.
I'd carefully worked my way across the sky, starting from the Great Square of Pegasus and hopping from star to star until I was confident I had the right patch. I pointed the telescope, got M31 in its crosshairs and proudly announced to my wife that I had found the closest giant galaxy to the Milky Way. Would she like to see it?
She then stayed quiet for a little too long as she looked through the eyepiece. Then came an unexpected question. "Is it near that little smudge?" Hmmm. "Err, no. It is that little smudge," I replied.
There was a pause. Of course, I knew exactly what had happened. We'd both seen photographs of M31 — a vast spiral galaxy with a brilliant center, sweeping dust lanes and hundreds of billions of stars. What we were actually looki...
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