Spiral Nebula in Andromeda, McDonald Observatory, TX, circa 1939

About this postcard

A black-and-white astronomical photograph shows the Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31, as a great tilted spiral, its bright central bulge cut by dark dust lanes, with two small companion galaxies appearing as white ovals against a dense field of stars. The printed caption calls it the "Spiral Nebula in Andromeda," the older wording for such objects, photographed at McDonald Observatory outside Fort Davis, Texas. McDonald Observatory opened in 1939 on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains, paid for by a bequest from banker William Johnson McDonald, and its dark West Texas skies made it a center for astronomical photography and spectroscopy. By the time this image was made, astronomers had already established that Andromeda lies far beyond the Milky Way, though the caption keeps the earlier term.