When we think of space, we generally think of just stars. But our sky is actually quite crowded, very seldom is that empty space between stars actually "empty". When you look at the orion constellation, for example, you would never know that this is hidden in that area. It's surprisingly large, too. Look at it compared to the full moon!
Captured using a 12" telescope on an equatorial mount, this was done over several nights. The mount is designed to compensate for Earth's rotation, and is the sum of hundreds of 2-5 minute exposures captured over the course of 2 months.
The colors are actually real (although a bit saturated for taste). If you were to float out in space in front of this with your phone and take a long exposure, these colors would show up just fine. However, if you were to just look at this area with your naked eyeballs you'd see mostly black space with a gray haze where the "flame" is. That's not because this area isn't incredibly vibrant, but because your eyes can't resolve color when things are this faint. It's like trying to see the color in flowers in moonlight, you can't.
For 65 seconds it’s pretty hard to not move the camera, even when pressed against something. Seems like there would be an easy solution, just curious what it is
Great shot! Was it tricky to stabilize the camera in the ISS? Curious if you had a good way to secure it against a window to minimize reflections and keep it from floating away!
I teamed up with a fellow redditor to try and capture the most ridiculously detailed image of the entire sun we could. The result was a whopping 140 megapixels, and features a solar "tornado" over 14 Earths tall. This is a crop from the full image, make sure you zoom in!
I took an absurdly high resolution photo of the moon on Wednesday, zoom in and check out the details!
I spent 20 hours shooting the Horsehead nebula to create my most intricately detailed photo of this region. This area is surprisingly large, and if it were brighter it would appear much larger than the full moon. Make sure you zoom in! [OC]
In one of the most rewarding shots of my career, I captured the International Space Station in conjunction with the 53-mile-wide Tycho crater on the moon. More details in the comments.
I modified a telescope to take photos of our sun. Here's a 164 megapixel image you can zoom into!
I used my largest telescope to observe the moon/mars occultation on Wednesday night, and captured this detailed photo. If you zoom in you can see surface details on Mars next to the craters on the moon. It was spectacular and surreal to witness live.
Mars is at its closest point to Earth right now. Here’s a picture I captured of it using a 14” telescope. On Wednesday I’ll be using the same telescope to capture it being occulted by the moon.
I took photos of the entire recent lunar eclipse. When I aligned them based on Earth's shadow, it helps visualize the shape of the Earth.
ajamesmccarthy OP t1_j9geikv wrote
Reply to comment by WreckitWrecksy in I spent 20 hours shooting the Horsehead nebula to create my most intricately detailed photo of this region. This area is surprisingly large, and if it were brighter it would appear much larger than the full moon. Make sure you zoom in! [OC] by ajamesmccarthy
I’m thankful we live in a time where cameras exist so we CAN see this stuff. It’s like we have cybernetic eyeballs :)