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Sigvald1 OP t1_ixzey3n wrote

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

My first ever tracked image!! 🤯 Previously I have only ever done untracked

It is 2.5 million light years away and contains about a trillion stars, each and every star has a high probability of planets orbiting around them. There has to be life out there…

It’s just so mindblowing to me, that I am able to photograph a whole different galaxy, a different world, 2.5 million years in the past. All this with a normal camera and tracker.

So last weekend I went to my cabin near steinkjer (Norway) in bortle 3 (low light pollution). It was -14 outside and prime conditions for seeing/photographing. The total integration time for this Image is 30 minutes.

I stacked all the pictures in deepskystacker together with the calibration frames. After i imported the file i got out of DSS into Photoshop. There i used levels to stretch out the image and curves to make galaxy be more visible. Then i used a script called starnet++ to remove the stars of the image, this is because with the stars on a seperate layer I can work on the galaxy without distorting stars. This is also how I reduce the stars to make the galaxy pop out more.

If you are fascinated by space as much i am, please check out My Instagram: sigurd_photo instagram

INFO: Lights: 43x40s, Darks: 15, Flats: 15, Biases: 20, Camera: fujifilm xt30 (APS-C), Lens: 55-200mm F4.6, ISO: 1250, Bortle: 3, Tracker: star adventurer gtI

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hidden-in-plainsight t1_iy22sq0 wrote

What's mind-blowing to me, is how small we are and how big we make our problems, as a species.

Life is too short to have to worry about small things. But, here we are, making existence terrible for each other, instead of lifting people up.

Kudos OP for sharing this humbling image. I hope it helps to open some people's eyes.

Edit: goes without saying this is a beautiful picture but im writing this just in case.

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Mjolnir12 t1_ixzn13e wrote

What tracking mount did you use? Some sort of equatorial?

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[deleted] t1_ixzgwm2 wrote

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SlapNuts007 t1_ixzq7wh wrote

I used to feel this way until I started trying to consider the timelines involved. If we're looking at a civilization, it's probably already dead. That doesn't mean there isn't a live one right now that we can't see yet, though!

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bookers555 t1_iy82r0t wrote

I've always through the opposite, what if they know about us, they have us monitored, but they are simply avoiding all contact because they think we are "not ready".

Imagine if there's a super advanced civilization, or a group of civilizations that have entire databases on "developing worlds" and we are just one entry in them.

But sadly the world is rarely as interesting as we imagine.

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King0ff t1_ixzrdap wrote

Who knows, what if tomorrow someone will invent engine, which will allow you to travel a billion times faster than light. All universe then will be ours to explore.

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Head-Ad-5637 t1_ixzhtdp wrote

I wish I understood all your Tec terms. You made a beautiful pic tho and as other poster said seeing these thing rather than just hearing or reading about them really does blow the mind and make you wonder what else is out there?! . Brilliant thanks so much for sharing 💓

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Fred-ditor t1_ixzlxl1 wrote

It blows my mind seeing that bright spot in the middle. It looks like a star at the center of a solar system but it's actually a black hole at the center of a galaxy but that black hole has attracted so many stars that the incredibly bright sphere is made of densely packed stars that each may house planets of their own and all that blue and white dust spinning around them is made of ho hum just a zillion more stars and this is just one of the countless galaxies out there.

Yet on a cosmic time scale, each of those galaxies may be like a drop of water, slowly evaporating their light and heat outwards while their mass shrivels and gets sucked into the super massive black hole before blinking out of existence, and what we're marveling at is the splash of a random droplet with no more significance to the universe than the drop you casually wiped off your windshield on the way to your meaningless job.

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Sigvald1 OP t1_ixzoq2p wrote

Wow… wow what a description, our life truly is meaningless on a cosmic scale. But that is what makes it amazing, us being to able look and wonder.

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Aftermathemetician t1_ixzzn57 wrote

Well, It’s not just one of the uncountable multitudes of galaxies out there. It’s humongous for a galaxy with almost 10x the average number of stars. Furthermore Andromeda is racing towards us and will eventually collide with the Milky Way and throw both galaxies into a chaotic whirlwind for a few billion years.

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jadedxvenusaur t1_iy2vmxq wrote

I hope the version of myself in Andromeda is doing great, being successful, living life. I love them. Go get that 4.0 GPA girl! 🤠

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