Anyone Know What This Is?

This looks like a comet or nebula, maybe a galaxy, but I doubt that. I took the photo on Oct 21 around 11:30pm in the Stanwood WA area, north of Seattle. Facing southwest high in the sky. You can see the Milky Way on the left.

Any thoughts or ideas what it could be? Why does it stand out with the blur unlike the rest of the stars? Taken with a Canon 24mm f/1.4L II at f/2. Thanks everyone!

That will be M31, the Andromeda galaxy. M45, the Pleiades, is the star grouping at the lower right.

Oh cool. Thanks

And sorry, I lied. I thought this was in my backyard but it was the side. Bottom faces east not SW.

Sweet. Thanks for the extra info. I've always liked M45, never knew what it was until now though. As a kid I used to sleep out on the trampoline and stare at the stars. I always liked trying to figure out what was up with M45, why was it so big but blurry looking (to the naked eye), how many stars are there? It wasn't until a few months ago I was shooting in my driveway where I saw there's a bunch of stars that make it up.

My knowledge is limited to the big dipper, the little dipper, north star, and Orion. I can also pick out Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and usually Venus. Cassiopeia to me has always been "the big W" and there's another constellation that looks like a kite with 4 stars in a diamond and a 5th dimmer star near middle. I think Capella might be part of the kite.

kawi_200 wrote in post #19161422
Cassiopeia to me has always been "the big W" and there's another constellation that looks like a kite with 4 stars in a diamond and a 5th dimmer star near middle. I think Capella might be part of the kite.

You're thinking of the constellation Cygnus and the bright star is Deneb. It's part of the summer triangle, an asterism made up of Deneb, Vega in the constellation Lyra and Altair the bright star in Aquilla. A very prominent and large asterism in the summer sky that is currently setting in the west right now at sunset.

Here's another trick to identify the objects in your star pics though I'm not sure just how well it works in very wide-angle photos. Check out www.astrometry.net. Open up a free account with them, then upload your jpeg and it will analyze the image and tell you everything that's in the photo.

http://astrometry.net/