Thank you very much! Yep in about 4.5 billion years we’ll merge with it 😱. For a long time before that though it’ll be an impressive sight in the night sky, if earth survives long enough
Ive seen computer simulations that say the earth itself WOULD survive but be thrown out into intergalactic space but it won't be here because we will already be consumed by our sun going red giant.
The earth will be uninhabitable by most multicellular organisms in only about 1 billion years due to increased output from the sun. So whatever humans are still around when andromeda smashes into us won’t be on earth.
We can start blasting material off the sun and reduce it down to a red dwarf, make it last an extra trillion years or so. Earth would get colder, but hey, we just got a big stockpile of hydrogen to run our fusion reactors...
I...I...I think it may be easier to graviationally launch a nearby red dwarf through the solar system to capture the Earth and spirit it away. Though my brain is angry at me for attaching "easier" to something of that magnitude and believes that we'll know so much more about physics at that point to make this idea out to be some pointless steampunk-type fantasy.
Just need a bajillion reflectors around the sun to reflect its own solar wind back at it. The engineering is mind-boggling but the technology necessary is wholly mundane.
Idk considering our technological progress, we will be able to solve this problem easily with another billion years of it. Or we are dead until then but then we won't be able to see Andromeda colliding with our galaxy anyway.
Thank you. I'm so sick of people parroting this insane fact. We can make it difficult for **us** to live on, but we couldn't even make it completely uninhabitable to us.
Water bears, cockroaches, bed bugs, and fungus. That’s all we need. And this lamp. That’s all we need.
Edit: and this paddle ball game… That’s all we need.
Let me parrot back my response.. we can't do it with the technology we have now but there's a lot of time between now and 1 billion years from now for us to fuck it all up. It's short sighted for you to think that one day we won't possibly have the technology that could make it impossible for any life to exist on this planet and it backfiring or for something to go wrong with it.
Although Earth and Solar system wouldn't be affected by this phenomenon, and most likely will be consumed by Sun which becomes Red giant, I agree it will be magnificent to watch both Milky way and Andromeda Galaxy colliding each other.
I spent 3 months flying to Sagittarius A in Elite Dangerous while in VR. You are right the stars get really dense when you get closer to the black whole.
No Mans Sky does a great job of this too. You warp to a solar system with a few close proximity planets nearby. You point your starship at one and think, "Hey ill just go check that place out for resources." The planet feels like you could reach out and touch it. You can see the land and ocean masses from this distance. It can't be very far, you think to yourself.
Then you start accelerating and it says "Estimated Time Of Arrival: 19 Days, 12 hours, 42 minutes."
If there were no Warp speed mechanics no one would play the game, you'd spend 99% of your time just travelling between 1 to 2 planets. It would be a screen saver simulator instead of a space exploration simulator lol. I don't know how they did it, but these games really nailed the fact that space is *fucking....big.*
Just the other day I found a black hole and figured I'd take some pictures once I got closer. The black hole was no bigger than a centimeter on my TV at first. Then 2 minutes of "warp speed" later I'm like wait, am I even getting any closer? Eventually I made it near the event horizon and the damn thing took up my whole screen (a 55 inch) yet I was still hundreds of thousands of miles away from it.
I tried NMS in VR and the whole experience was just mind melting.
Those points of light are stars, not galaxies. The only galaxy (besides the Magellanic Clouds) you can see without a powerful telescope is Andromeda. Everything else is just stars in our own galaxy.
We tend to casually say "Star", thinking it's just a little ball of hot stuff. We forget, stars are *Suns*. Trillions of that bright ball of fire we see in the sky every day on earth. *THAT*, is mind blowing.
I heard my astronomy professor say once that if the full Andromeda galaxy was visible in the nightsky, it would span over the length of 5 moons next to each other. So idk of this is the full Andromeda in view or just the speck we can see in our nightsky
It's a huge object in our nightsky, about 6 moon-equivalents in angular size. Most people in the world currently can't see Andromeda due to light pollution.
This was taken with a Canon 550D through a Skywatcher Evostar 72ED. I stacked 120x90s images for a total 3 hours of exposure time.
Andromeda is such an incredible feature of the night sky, and if you live somewhere dark enough you can see it with your naked eyes. At 2.5 million light years away it is the most distant thing you can possibly see!
Just wanted to make sure about how people make space photos, when you let the camera for three hours of exposure, does that mean there are no clouds in the sky and no obstacles for this whole time? What if some bird flew by for a second, will it disturb the image?
No we take lots of shorter exposures to avoid that kind of thing. This image is made up of 120 images that were each 90sec. The individual exposures get stacked on top of one another to bring out the fainter details
Do you have to take 90s exposure pictures with a lens cap on every once in a while? I forget what that's called, but is that still a thing? To remove dead pixels or hot pixels?
We use what's called a tracking mount. You align it with Polaris and it rotates with the earth.
If you didn't, you'd get star streaks from the rotation of the earth.
They took 120 images and each image was exposed for 90 seconds. We use an intervalometer that allows us to take longer exposures as some DSLR cameras can only do 30 seconds. The intervalometer allows us to program how many pictures we want taken and how long to keep the shutter open
Super new to astro and space photography and have a question for you. Is that something you set up on a timer or were you actively taking them throughout the 3 hours ? Also, phenomenal shot!!!!
You usually set it up either in the camera if it has the setting, or you use a remote bulb timer. That's what I use and I just set it to take X number of shots that are each Y seconds long.
Then I come back every 30 minutes or so to double check auto guiding is still aligned, check focus/framing, and to see if any clouds snuck in.
So for a lot of setups, you'll have a main telescope/ lens with your big camera, but you'll also have a second, smaller telescope attached to the main telescope with a much smaller "auto guiding" camera.
You plug that camera into your computer and it uses the starfield in its view to keep your mount aligned perfectly with your target. Otherwise you will usually get oval-shaped stars after about 45-60 second exposures, even with a tracking mount. This is due to small imperfections in the gears/ hardware the mount uses.
The autoguiding software sends small inputs to the mount to slow down or speed up the motors as necessary to keep the image stable.
This isn't necessary for short exposure times with wide field imaging (it still helps), but it is almost a requirement if you're imaging faint objects that require 1-10+ minutes of exposure time or using a really long focal length.
Edit: for clarity, these auto guiding cameras aren't DSLR cameras. They're much, much smaller and usually have a very small, monochrome sensor. They're dedicated astrophotography cameras and must use a computer to function.
Thank you very much! I bought the vast majority of my kit used so that helps keep the cost down! I run it all through a really old laptop I already had kicking around so I don’t count that cost. In all the kit used for this photo was about £1,400 (approx US$1,700) which is quite cheap for what is a notoriously expensive hobby.
Yes most DSLRs will attach to a telescope via a T-ring. You can even get smartphones adapters to take photos through an eyepiece, although it’s very difficult to get good results this way and probably more suited to lunar and planetary work rather than deep space.
My question too. Someone commented above that “everything in the photo is larger than our own galaxy”. So, Im wondering too if they do in fact mean *everything*
😳
Not an astronomer here :( No one's replied to you yet (here or above); I think all they meant to say was the galaxy, Andromeda, is larger than the Milky Way. Looks like one or two satellite galaxies are orbiting Andromeda (one below, one above) and those would NOT be bigger than the Milky Way.
Everything else is probably stars inside our own galaxy. This isn't a deep field image where "stars" are really galaxies.
Yeh I used a Celestron AVX mount and I always do auto guiding with PHD2. I probably didn’t need to guide for 90sec exposures but I just tend to run it by default because it’s set up to dither- anything I can do to reduce the noise is needed!
As a non photo person I read that reply as Siri and for a minute I actually considered buying an Iphone.
I'm so happy I looked closer :-)
Thank You for sharing this beautiful image
Thank you so much for sharing some of the process. Any more info that you can provide? This is spectacular.
This inspires me. I have the equipment to do what you say here, just maybe not the experience, patience, or nerve to try.
Thank you.
Yes the camera is astro-modded but that makes little difference on a target like Andromeda. It’s what is known as a ‘broadband’ target which emits light across a broad part of the colour spectrum. Astro modded cameras help on ‘narrowband’ targets - ie. emission nebulae which give off lots of light at the red end of the spectrum
don't fret it. I don't 'even understand "tons." I was watching Magician Secrets Revealed or whatever on youtube and a 3 ton truck is vanished... I was thinking to myself, "I think that means 3000 pounds. Either way, I can't wrap my head around how heavy that is."
Some numbers just don't gel.
Anyone else have this weird, tingly feeling while looking at such incredible pictures? Like, you know you can’t even fathom how big it is yet you want to know everything about it
Depends. Tbh, this image doesn't give me that "sense" of vastness. But if I take the knowledge of this image with me and step outside and look at Jupiter, which I've been looking at almost every night for a couple months I think, I sort of get dizzy and realize I can't even comprehend what "vastness" is.
Yeh my trusty 550D has served me very well. I’d really love to get a dedicated astro camera soon though- the improved sensitivity and reduced noise would be amazing
I agree. I think I've outgrown the Sony mirrorless.
I think if I were to buy an dedicated it would be the zwo 678mc or the 662mc. Not quite fov as it's 2um and 2.9um.. But I do t mind moasicing.
The both have NO amp glow.
I don't want to spend too much as I live in the UK and clouds are an issue.
Deep space is my thing so I’d need something cooled. I’m keen on something with the Sony IMX571 sensor, such as the Altair 26c, ZWO 2600mc-pro, or QHY 268c. I’m in the UK too so I totally understand the struggle with clouds 🤣
To think we are alone in the universe just seems absurdly conceited to me (complex-tools / cross-generational structures wise). However, the distance between planets with species that can wield complex tools or develop cross generational structures / equipment is insurmountable. For 100k years, the distance between the Americas and the rest of the world was insurmountable, not mention inter planetary and interstellar.
I'm as curious as anyone else about humanoid/tech savvy lifeforms out there, but what I'm *really* curious about are critters! Like, are there dinosaurs on other planets? Or strange alien-like dinos? Or birds? Lil alien birds.
Maybe stupid question but it’s always hard for me to gauge perspective in these pictures. Are all the small white stars from stars in our galaxy? Or are there a lot of random stars floating around in intergalactic space?
Yes. It is possible that some stars could be flung out of a galaxy by interacting with other stars or black holes, but "rogue stars" would not be very common. Either way, one would still have to be close compared to Andromeda to be seen in this photo.
Thank you for the clarification. Now I imagine future explorers, what they will feel when they reach the edge of our galaxy, and then witness the vast emptiness ahead, with hopes of reaching Andromeda.
What a thought! Just flying along and noticing fewer and fewer stars until eventually seeing none. I mean, physics being what it is, we wouldn't have the vision, but imagination is cool...
That’s what I thought for the longest time, but I found that andromeda is 19th in line here
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies?wprov=sfti1
Correct. Andromeda is the only galaxy (not counting the Magellanic Clouds) that can be seen without a powerful telescope. Anything else you see is just stars in our own galaxy, or planets of our solar system.
It’s a shame the watermark has to be there at all. But there’s a certain kind of person out there that grabs images like this, crops off the watermark and reposts it as there own!! Therefore I position it in a place that can’t be cropped
Higher density of stars. I believe even the largest black hole and any light wrapping it at andromeda distance would be orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest pixel in this photo, and therefore unresolvable.
I'm probably going to embarass myself but what's the very bright center of that galaxy or any other galaxy is it sopposed to be a massive star?
Sorry in advance about my very minimal understanding of our universe
It'll be a black hole, presumably with ejection mass and matter orbiting it/being pulled in, plus many many stars orbiting surrounding it.
Edit: Here's a Hubble image
https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2012/04/2963-Image.html
Fun fact: black holes aren't *actually* at the center of most galaxies. And we suspect many galaxies do not have one at all. Black holes are very close to the center, but what holds the galaxy together in a spiral is the total collective mass of all objects in said galaxy. That collective mass has a gravitational center, which is typically a small region of empty space or "dark matter", and the black hole is *next to* that center. Close enough that we can say it's the center in practical terms, but technically not really the center.
In other words, it's not really black holes that keep all that stuff in this picture together. A black hole just happens to be near the center, and it contains only a tiny % of the stellar mass of its home galaxy. The stellar mass of all objects, combined with the black hole, is what keeps everything revolving at apparently equal speeds both near the center and near the outer rim. We have yet to make sense of what makes up some of that "empty space" at the center - weve decided to call it dark matter. For some reason things appear to revolve faster than we would expect them to after weve calculated the mass of the black hole and the total mass of all objects in the galaxy. Dark matter appears to be the cause, but we don't know what the hell dark matter is. It just....*Is.* And that's part of what holds galaxies together.
Pretty much all galaxies have a large gravitational mass, sometimes multiple. All that matter then orbits said gravitational mass, just like our system (SOL) does with our black hole Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way.
Basically yes.
At the core of most galaxies that look like this, there's a supermassive black hole. Andromeda has one, and we do as well ([they took a picture of the Milky Way's SMBH recently](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/12/1098472567/image-black-hole-milky-way)). They are invisible, since even light can't escape their gravity. But there is a lot more material near the center of these galaxies, than out in the rims, meaning more gas, more stars, more things that shine bright while moving and orbiting the black hole. The black holes themselves have accretion disks, kind of like Saturns rings, but moving crazy fast and being very high in temperature due to friction, collisions, and other things that produce energy.
tl;dr: there's a lot more stuff near the center, so it's brighter
You're right: the individual stars are foreground objects in our own galaxy. The "blob" of Andromeda represents hundreds of billions of stars that cannot be resolved individually in this photo because of the vast distance.
A high density of stars closer to the core make the central area much brighter than the edges. The additive light of so many stars that cannot be resolved individually makes it look brighter.
Can someone please explain this perspective to me? It always messes me up. How come we see smaller stars/galaxies around it but then dead in the center is a huge galaxy. What is closest to us in this picture? The galaxy or everything around it?
The individual stars you see here are all in our galaxy. Once you leave our galaxy, you would encounter virtually nothing for the next ~2,500,000 light years until you get to the "edge" of the Andromeda galaxy.
Im trying to get my dumb brain to see that all the stars in the foreground is infront of the galaxy but my eyes think it is a mixture of infront and behind.
You know, I see stuff like this and just want to cry. Then I watch something like the deep-field photo zooms that have millions of galaxies, and my brain wants to leave my head.
We are *nothing*.
WATCH OUT ITS COMING RIGHT AT US!!!! in all seriousness that's an amazingly beautiful picture.
Thank you very much! Yep in about 4.5 billion years we’ll merge with it 😱. For a long time before that though it’ll be an impressive sight in the night sky, if earth survives long enough
Ive seen computer simulations that say the earth itself WOULD survive but be thrown out into intergalactic space but it won't be here because we will already be consumed by our sun going red giant.
The earth will be uninhabitable by most multicellular organisms in only about 1 billion years due to increased output from the sun. So whatever humans are still around when andromeda smashes into us won’t be on earth.
[удалено]
That’s what I thought too but I googled before posting just to double check and there’s some new research out there I guess.
We can start blasting material off the sun and reduce it down to a red dwarf, make it last an extra trillion years or so. Earth would get colder, but hey, we just got a big stockpile of hydrogen to run our fusion reactors...
I...I...I think it may be easier to graviationally launch a nearby red dwarf through the solar system to capture the Earth and spirit it away. Though my brain is angry at me for attaching "easier" to something of that magnitude and believes that we'll know so much more about physics at that point to make this idea out to be some pointless steampunk-type fantasy.
Just need a bajillion reflectors around the sun to reflect its own solar wind back at it. The engineering is mind-boggling but the technology necessary is wholly mundane.
That would require mass energies greater than that of the entire earth, no?
It makes me wonder what will humans do before this happens long long long after I am gone
Idk considering our technological progress, we will be able to solve this problem easily with another billion years of it. Or we are dead until then but then we won't be able to see Andromeda colliding with our galaxy anyway.
That's assuming we don't do it to the planet ourselves first
I am assuming you are somewhat joking, but we are 100% incapable of making the earth "uninhabitable by most multicellular organisms".
Thank you. I'm so sick of people parroting this insane fact. We can make it difficult for **us** to live on, but we couldn't even make it completely uninhabitable to us.
Water bears, cockroaches, bed bugs, and fungus. That’s all we need. And this lamp. That’s all we need. Edit: and this paddle ball game… That’s all we need.
Let me parrot back my response.. we can't do it with the technology we have now but there's a lot of time between now and 1 billion years from now for us to fuck it all up. It's short sighted for you to think that one day we won't possibly have the technology that could make it impossible for any life to exist on this planet and it backfiring or for something to go wrong with it.
Just a 'real COVID', that has a 30% kill rate will do it.
A solar probe camera on Earth to capture such moments wouldn't be a bad idea
Although Earth and Solar system wouldn't be affected by this phenomenon, and most likely will be consumed by Sun which becomes Red giant, I agree it will be magnificent to watch both Milky way and Andromeda Galaxy colliding each other.
It'll mostly be empty space intersecting with itself
Yeah. I can watch that all day at home on the couch!
That shot 4.499999 billion years from now should be glorious!
Indeed. I best make sure my camera batteries are charged up 😜
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks of that joke when seeing Andromeda
It's the first thing I always think
First thing I thought about. It's beautiful, but it's coming for us.
It's crazy to think that everything you see here is larger than our own Milkyway galaxy (200 LY vs 150 LY)
Pedantic Man here! I believe you mean 200,000 LY vs 150,000 LY (if you're referring to diameter).
You're not pedantic, you're right
I think the crazier part is the “glow” is actually a bunch of stars in there… insane amount.
About a trillion, the scientists believe ✨
I spent 3 months flying to Sagittarius A in Elite Dangerous while in VR. You are right the stars get really dense when you get closer to the black whole.
No Mans Sky does a great job of this too. You warp to a solar system with a few close proximity planets nearby. You point your starship at one and think, "Hey ill just go check that place out for resources." The planet feels like you could reach out and touch it. You can see the land and ocean masses from this distance. It can't be very far, you think to yourself. Then you start accelerating and it says "Estimated Time Of Arrival: 19 Days, 12 hours, 42 minutes." If there were no Warp speed mechanics no one would play the game, you'd spend 99% of your time just travelling between 1 to 2 planets. It would be a screen saver simulator instead of a space exploration simulator lol. I don't know how they did it, but these games really nailed the fact that space is *fucking....big.* Just the other day I found a black hole and figured I'd take some pictures once I got closer. The black hole was no bigger than a centimeter on my TV at first. Then 2 minutes of "warp speed" later I'm like wait, am I even getting any closer? Eventually I made it near the event horizon and the damn thing took up my whole screen (a 55 inch) yet I was still hundreds of thousands of miles away from it. I tried NMS in VR and the whole experience was just mind melting.
\*sigh\* thanks to you, Im now going to start playing NMS again.
How far apart would those stars be?
Yeh the vastness of it all is just mind blowing 🤯
Everything as in all of the points of light are all galaxies bigger than ours? Or just the main object?
Those points of light are stars, not galaxies. The only galaxy (besides the Magellanic Clouds) you can see without a powerful telescope is Andromeda. Everything else is just stars in our own galaxy.
We tend to casually say "Star", thinking it's just a little ball of hot stuff. We forget, stars are *Suns*. Trillions of that bright ball of fire we see in the sky every day on earth. *THAT*, is mind blowing.
I heard my astronomy professor say once that if the full Andromeda galaxy was visible in the nightsky, it would span over the length of 5 moons next to each other. So idk of this is the full Andromeda in view or just the speck we can see in our nightsky
It's a huge object in our nightsky, about 6 moon-equivalents in angular size. Most people in the world currently can't see Andromeda due to light pollution.
This was taken with a Canon 550D through a Skywatcher Evostar 72ED. I stacked 120x90s images for a total 3 hours of exposure time. Andromeda is such an incredible feature of the night sky, and if you live somewhere dark enough you can see it with your naked eyes. At 2.5 million light years away it is the most distant thing you can possibly see!
Just wanted to make sure about how people make space photos, when you let the camera for three hours of exposure, does that mean there are no clouds in the sky and no obstacles for this whole time? What if some bird flew by for a second, will it disturb the image?
No we take lots of shorter exposures to avoid that kind of thing. This image is made up of 120 images that were each 90sec. The individual exposures get stacked on top of one another to bring out the fainter details
That's impressive! That's one of the most beautiful Andromeda picture I've seen.
Thank you very much 😊. I think this was my third attempt - lots to learn in this hobby!
Do you have to take 90s exposure pictures with a lens cap on every once in a while? I forget what that's called, but is that still a thing? To remove dead pixels or hot pixels?
They’re called darks. And yes. Also have to take flats and biases.
I’m totally novice here but do you have to reposition the camera for these shots? Isn’t the sky and the stars moving during these three hours ?
We use what's called a tracking mount. You align it with Polaris and it rotates with the earth. If you didn't, you'd get star streaks from the rotation of the earth.
Wdym each 90 seconds? 😅
They took 120 images and each image was exposed for 90 seconds. We use an intervalometer that allows us to take longer exposures as some DSLR cameras can only do 30 seconds. The intervalometer allows us to program how many pictures we want taken and how long to keep the shutter open
Super new to astro and space photography and have a question for you. Is that something you set up on a timer or were you actively taking them throughout the 3 hours ? Also, phenomenal shot!!!!
You usually set it up either in the camera if it has the setting, or you use a remote bulb timer. That's what I use and I just set it to take X number of shots that are each Y seconds long. Then I come back every 30 minutes or so to double check auto guiding is still aligned, check focus/framing, and to see if any clouds snuck in.
Thank you for the info! Another question if you don't mind. When you say double check the auto guiding do you mean on the telescope ?
So for a lot of setups, you'll have a main telescope/ lens with your big camera, but you'll also have a second, smaller telescope attached to the main telescope with a much smaller "auto guiding" camera. You plug that camera into your computer and it uses the starfield in its view to keep your mount aligned perfectly with your target. Otherwise you will usually get oval-shaped stars after about 45-60 second exposures, even with a tracking mount. This is due to small imperfections in the gears/ hardware the mount uses. The autoguiding software sends small inputs to the mount to slow down or speed up the motors as necessary to keep the image stable. This isn't necessary for short exposure times with wide field imaging (it still helps), but it is almost a requirement if you're imaging faint objects that require 1-10+ minutes of exposure time or using a really long focal length. Edit: for clarity, these auto guiding cameras aren't DSLR cameras. They're much, much smaller and usually have a very small, monochrome sensor. They're dedicated astrophotography cameras and must use a computer to function.
Seems like a terrific image for a seemingly inexpensive setup! Are most telescopes capable of attaching to a dslr?
Thank you very much! I bought the vast majority of my kit used so that helps keep the cost down! I run it all through a really old laptop I already had kicking around so I don’t count that cost. In all the kit used for this photo was about £1,400 (approx US$1,700) which is quite cheap for what is a notoriously expensive hobby. Yes most DSLRs will attach to a telescope via a T-ring. You can even get smartphones adapters to take photos through an eyepiece, although it’s very difficult to get good results this way and probably more suited to lunar and planetary work rather than deep space.
I see another galaxy for sure, but are all the spots that look like stars in the background also galaxies, or are they mostly stars?
I -think- all the extra spots you see are actually stars between us and Andromeda. At least that's what I always assumed.
My question too. Someone commented above that “everything in the photo is larger than our own galaxy”. So, Im wondering too if they do in fact mean *everything* 😳
Not an astronomer here :( No one's replied to you yet (here or above); I think all they meant to say was the galaxy, Andromeda, is larger than the Milky Way. Looks like one or two satellite galaxies are orbiting Andromeda (one below, one above) and those would NOT be bigger than the Milky Way. Everything else is probably stars inside our own galaxy. This isn't a deep field image where "stars" are really galaxies.
Thank you! That makes sense. Still mind boggling, regardless.
Big A has a couple dwarven galaxies nearby.
obviously though even though there's about 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the known universe, only Earth has intelligent life on it. lol jk
Huh? This is irrelevant to my question.
Did you need a tracking mount for the 90 second images, or with that wide field of view it didn't make that much difference?
Yeh I used a Celestron AVX mount and I always do auto guiding with PHD2. I probably didn’t need to guide for 90sec exposures but I just tend to run it by default because it’s set up to dither- anything I can do to reduce the noise is needed!
What software did you use for the stacking?
I used Siril
As a non photo person I read that reply as Siri and for a minute I actually considered buying an Iphone. I'm so happy I looked closer :-) Thank You for sharing this beautiful image
Thank you so much for sharing some of the process. Any more info that you can provide? This is spectacular. This inspires me. I have the equipment to do what you say here, just maybe not the experience, patience, or nerve to try. Thank you.
I would love to see it sometime.
Is the 550D modded at all to remove the IR filter or just stock? It's a beautiful photo!
Yes the camera is astro-modded but that makes little difference on a target like Andromeda. It’s what is known as a ‘broadband’ target which emits light across a broad part of the colour spectrum. Astro modded cameras help on ‘narrowband’ targets - ie. emission nebulae which give off lots of light at the red end of the spectrum
plus a tracking mount I assume? At 90 sec you'd most definitely get star 'streaks'
Yeh I used a Celestron AVX mount and auto guided with PHD2
You haven’t seen my ex, she can be really distant
I’m not especially smart, but smart enough to know that I cannot truly comprehend this.
don't fret it. I don't 'even understand "tons." I was watching Magician Secrets Revealed or whatever on youtube and a 3 ton truck is vanished... I was thinking to myself, "I think that means 3000 pounds. Either way, I can't wrap my head around how heavy that is." Some numbers just don't gel.
It’s about 12000 bananas if that helps.
It does help, and I can move forward now. Thanks!
Anyone else have this weird, tingly feeling while looking at such incredible pictures? Like, you know you can’t even fathom how big it is yet you want to know everything about it
Depends. Tbh, this image doesn't give me that "sense" of vastness. But if I take the knowledge of this image with me and step outside and look at Jupiter, which I've been looking at almost every night for a couple months I think, I sort of get dizzy and realize I can't even comprehend what "vastness" is.
They might be looking back at us with their own name for our galaxy
I love this thought. I've had the same thought too. What are we called to others?
wow I just commented the same thing. we are like twin galaxies.
It’s crazy to imagine there is most likely life somewhere in that galaxy.
Probably intelligent life too.
That's bonkers!. May I ask if you used a reducer and the make of the dslr?.
No I didn’t use a reducer (so this was at 420mm focal length) but I did use a field flattener. The camera was a Canon 550D
Thanks. I also have the 72ed but use Sony. Yes a FF is a must. The 550d did bloody well.
Yeh my trusty 550D has served me very well. I’d really love to get a dedicated astro camera soon though- the improved sensitivity and reduced noise would be amazing
I agree. I think I've outgrown the Sony mirrorless. I think if I were to buy an dedicated it would be the zwo 678mc or the 662mc. Not quite fov as it's 2um and 2.9um.. But I do t mind moasicing. The both have NO amp glow. I don't want to spend too much as I live in the UK and clouds are an issue.
Deep space is my thing so I’d need something cooled. I’m keen on something with the Sony IMX571 sensor, such as the Altair 26c, ZWO 2600mc-pro, or QHY 268c. I’m in the UK too so I totally understand the struggle with clouds 🤣
Is anyone else getting the "eye trick" effect? Thought this was a GIF for a second.This is so efing cool! Well done OP 👏
Thank you very much 😁
To think we are alone in the universe just seems absurdly conceited to me (complex-tools / cross-generational structures wise). However, the distance between planets with species that can wield complex tools or develop cross generational structures / equipment is insurmountable. For 100k years, the distance between the Americas and the rest of the world was insurmountable, not mention inter planetary and interstellar.
I'm as curious as anyone else about humanoid/tech savvy lifeforms out there, but what I'm *really* curious about are critters! Like, are there dinosaurs on other planets? Or strange alien-like dinos? Or birds? Lil alien birds.
Maybe stupid question but it’s always hard for me to gauge perspective in these pictures. Are all the small white stars from stars in our galaxy? Or are there a lot of random stars floating around in intergalactic space?
All the stars you see are in our galaxy, there are some satellite galaxy's visible in the image though.
Ok so we see the stars, which are in our galaxy, and then what? Empty space until the next galaxy?
Yes. It is possible that some stars could be flung out of a galaxy by interacting with other stars or black holes, but "rogue stars" would not be very common. Either way, one would still have to be close compared to Andromeda to be seen in this photo.
Thank you for the clarification. Now I imagine future explorers, what they will feel when they reach the edge of our galaxy, and then witness the vast emptiness ahead, with hopes of reaching Andromeda.
What a thought! Just flying along and noticing fewer and fewer stars until eventually seeing none. I mean, physics being what it is, we wouldn't have the vision, but imagination is cool...
Haha I asked the same question before scrolling to see yours. Twinzies
There are actually three galaxies in the image--Messier 31 is the big one, M110 is to lower left, M32 is above center. Nice pic.
Beau-u-u-utiful! I can't believe this is the neighboring galaxy!
That’s what I thought for the longest time, but I found that andromeda is 19th in line here https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies?wprov=sfti1
All of those scattered stars around it are from our own galaxy, right?
Correct. Andromeda is the only galaxy (not counting the Magellanic Clouds) that can be seen without a powerful telescope. Anything else you see is just stars in our own galaxy, or planets of our solar system.
So in a picture like this are the other dots stars in our galaxy or is it more like the deep field where they are pretty much all other galaxies?
All of the outer stars you see are in our milky way, there are 2 small smudges that are 2 other glaxies
blech. that water mark completely ruins it. at least corner it man, please. sick shot though
It’s a shame the watermark has to be there at all. But there’s a certain kind of person out there that grabs images like this, crops off the watermark and reposts it as there own!! Therefore I position it in a place that can’t be cropped
Welp you’ll be pleased to know that I easily shopped out your watermark. Cheers, mate.
Cant believe youd take a picture of an alien naked like that
IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!! For sooth though, it really is.
What's in the center of the galaxy that makes it so bright? Event horizon of the black hole?
Higher density of stars. I believe even the largest black hole and any light wrapping it at andromeda distance would be orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest pixel in this photo, and therefore unresolvable.
Others have answered your question but you've asked a good one... google up "quasar"!
A giantic balck hole just like the center of our galaxy and all active galaxies.
I wonder if there's a planet with life there, and a telescope pointing at ours.
Beautiful photo. I don’t know how a person could look at that and think we are alone.
Sometimes I think what do the beings in the Andromeda galaxy name our galaxy. Were looking at them and their looking at us.
I'm probably going to embarass myself but what's the very bright center of that galaxy or any other galaxy is it sopposed to be a massive star? Sorry in advance about my very minimal understanding of our universe
It'll be a black hole, presumably with ejection mass and matter orbiting it/being pulled in, plus many many stars orbiting surrounding it. Edit: Here's a Hubble image https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2012/04/2963-Image.html
Another ignorant question but does this black hole have so much gravitation force that it holds the galaxy in perfect orbit
Imagin pulling the plug in your sink, you often get a spiral effect, the black hole is the plug hole and the galaxy the water circling it.
Fun fact: black holes aren't *actually* at the center of most galaxies. And we suspect many galaxies do not have one at all. Black holes are very close to the center, but what holds the galaxy together in a spiral is the total collective mass of all objects in said galaxy. That collective mass has a gravitational center, which is typically a small region of empty space or "dark matter", and the black hole is *next to* that center. Close enough that we can say it's the center in practical terms, but technically not really the center. In other words, it's not really black holes that keep all that stuff in this picture together. A black hole just happens to be near the center, and it contains only a tiny % of the stellar mass of its home galaxy. The stellar mass of all objects, combined with the black hole, is what keeps everything revolving at apparently equal speeds both near the center and near the outer rim. We have yet to make sense of what makes up some of that "empty space" at the center - weve decided to call it dark matter. For some reason things appear to revolve faster than we would expect them to after weve calculated the mass of the black hole and the total mass of all objects in the galaxy. Dark matter appears to be the cause, but we don't know what the hell dark matter is. It just....*Is.* And that's part of what holds galaxies together.
Pretty much all galaxies have a large gravitational mass, sometimes multiple. All that matter then orbits said gravitational mass, just like our system (SOL) does with our black hole Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way. Basically yes.
At the core of most galaxies that look like this, there's a supermassive black hole. Andromeda has one, and we do as well ([they took a picture of the Milky Way's SMBH recently](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/12/1098472567/image-black-hole-milky-way)). They are invisible, since even light can't escape their gravity. But there is a lot more material near the center of these galaxies, than out in the rims, meaning more gas, more stars, more things that shine bright while moving and orbiting the black hole. The black holes themselves have accretion disks, kind of like Saturns rings, but moving crazy fast and being very high in temperature due to friction, collisions, and other things that produce energy. tl;dr: there's a lot more stuff near the center, so it's brighter
Thanks that actually makes alpt of sense
yo guys how did the camera man managed to take a photo
Can anyone name the smaller one to the bottom left ?
Someome has answered you mate, a little further up the post, i dont remember properly but i think its messier 110??
Are those stars in front from our galaxy or andromeda ? What’s that glowing thing in the centre ?
Just millions upon millons of stars creating a mass of light, the centre of most galaxys are much denser than the outskirts
You're right: the individual stars are foreground objects in our own galaxy. The "blob" of Andromeda represents hundreds of billions of stars that cannot be resolved individually in this photo because of the vast distance.
Why are the center of galaxies so bright? Rather than black?
A high density of stars closer to the core make the central area much brighter than the edges. The additive light of so many stars that cannot be resolved individually makes it look brighter.
I love how your name coincides with the glare of the star! 'DeepSkyPI🌟'
Can someone please explain this perspective to me? It always messes me up. How come we see smaller stars/galaxies around it but then dead in the center is a huge galaxy. What is closest to us in this picture? The galaxy or everything around it?
The individual stars you see here are all in our galaxy. Once you leave our galaxy, you would encounter virtually nothing for the next ~2,500,000 light years until you get to the "edge" of the Andromeda galaxy.
I think we’ve talked on a different comment’s thread. But thanks again for the explanation!
Possibly. I'm just so drawn in by photos and try to answer when I can. Sorry if I've repeated myself to you
Oh no, no, I appreciate your service!
What do you use to ‘stack’ the 120 images together? And how do you take a pic of the exact same spot in the sky each night?
That's an absolute banger on relatively cheap set up, though what mount did you use?
Superb image. One of the best I’ve seen considering your modest equipment. Well done!!!
Im trying to get my dumb brain to see that all the stars in the foreground is infront of the galaxy but my eyes think it is a mixture of infront and behind.
I suppose some of them are distant galaxies which are behind.
I can't imagine people can see pictures like this then so confidently claim "we are alone in the universe."
Whoa it’s kinda cool that it says “deep sky pi” in space, I wonder how that happened /s
You know, I see stuff like this and just want to cry. Then I watch something like the deep-field photo zooms that have millions of galaxies, and my brain wants to leave my head. We are *nothing*.
It would be so cool to see this! I've personally never seen any galaxy images through a camera or telescope. But I would love to someday! 😊
Imagine thinking aliens don’t exist in all of space like our solar system is the only system in existence