This time of year you have the best chance to see the farthest object visible with the unaided human eye.

Away from heavy city lighting in the countryside, look in the early southeastern sky and you may see the Andromeda Galaxy, the next door neighbor to our Milky Way Galaxy.

Last week, I featured the constellations Pegasus the Winged Horse and Andromeda the Princess that are literally linked together.

The main part of Pegasus is called the “Square of Pegasus.” Look for the square orientated diagonally in the southeastern sky. It’s easy to see because the stars that make it up are some of the brightest in that area.

The best way to find the Andromeda Galaxy in our Butler sky is to first locate the Square of Pegasus. Actually, with the way it’s orientated in the southeastern sky it actually should be dubbed the Diamond of Pegasus.

Alpheratz is the star on the left hand side of the diamond. I love the name of that star!

Next, look for two curved lines of stars that arc off to the left of Alpheratz. The lower arc of stars is much brighter than the upper arc. The lower arc outlines the wings of Pegasus the Winged Horse. The fainter upper arc outlines Princess Andromeda.

From Alpheratz, follow the lower line or wing to the left and the third star is Mirach, a fairly bright star but not as bright as the “rats” star.

Now look for two fainter stars lined up above Mirach, and just to the upper right of those two, see if you can spot a small misty patch of light that kind of looks like a tiny cloud. That’s it! That’s the Andromeda Galaxy.

If it’s dark enough where you are, you can actually see a faint little patch of light. It’s said to be the farthest thing you can see with the naked eye. Even in areas of light to moderate light pollution you can see it.

Admittedly, though, it is an unimpressive oblong fuzz ball that is a little brighter in the middle. It’s not one of my marquee celestial treasures that I like to show people at my star parties, but that fuzz ball is still a galaxy larger than our own Milky Way, made up of possibly more than a trillion stars!

The Andromeda Galaxy is almost two and a half million light-years away. Now, if you’re new to Skywatch, one light-year equals nearly six trillion miles. Since a light-year is defined as the distance light travels in a year’s time, the light that you’re seeing from Andromeda has been traveling to your eyes for more than two million years. We don’t see it as it is now, but as what it looked like more than two million years ago.

From what astronomers know about galaxies, though, it probably hasn’t changed all that much in appearance.

Despite that incredible distance, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are the closest neighbors to each other, but without a doubt, Andromeda is a larger galaxy, possibly twice the diameter of our Milky Way.

Like our home galaxy, most of the mass that makes up Andromeda is invisible, what astronomers call dark matter, which still remains a big mystery.

The Andromeda Galaxy is very important to the history of astronomical discovery.

Less than a hundred years ago the Milky Way Galaxy was all we thought there was to the universe. What we now know as the Andromeda Galaxy was then thought to be just a big cloud of nebulosity.

That all changed in the 1920s when Edwin Hubble and his assistant Henrietta Leavitt discovered the Andromeda Galaxy was a heck of a lot farther away than it was previously believed to be. They used what is known as Cepheid variable stars to gauge just how far away Andromeda was.

Cepheid variable stars vary in size and brightness over a period related to average brightness. They’re what astronomers call “standard candles.”

As it turned out, through painstaking observation and photographic analysis, Cepheid variable stars were found in the Andromeda nebula. By observing their brightening and dimming cycle, it was determined that the Andromeda nebulae was way, way farther away than anyone ever thought. Furthermore, it was concluded that it was a whole other galaxy of stars independent of our Milky Way.

Hubble gets all the credit for this discovery, but Leavitt actually discovered the Cepheid variables in Andromeda and did most of the labor intensive legwork.

By the way, if you need something more to worry about, the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies are on a collision course. They’re zipping toward each other at 50 miles a second.

In about four to five billion years there will be a galactic merger of super epic proportions!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Pennsylvania Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at www.lynchandthestars.com.