How Our Sky Would Look If Andromeda was Brighter

Phage
Show of hands...

How many have seen M31 (Andromeda galaxy)?
How many have seen...Saturn?
How many have seen a solar eclipse?
How many have tried?

I mean for real. Pictures are beautiful but don't approach the impact of the real thing. M31 is there. M42 (Orion nebula) is there. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

For some it only takes a moonless night. For others it takes a moonless night and a drive to escape city lights. But they are there and they are quite...awesome.

All you will see is a fuzzy so don't expect glourious colour, same for Orion nebula, it's a fuzzy.

Also avert your eyes to use the light sensitive parts to see more.

you cannot see Jupiter surface with binos, just a bright blob and 3 moons maybe. You will need a telescope to see Jupiter's clouds and spot.

Phage
Show of hands...

How many have seen M31 (Andromeda galaxy)?
How many have seen...Saturn?
How many have seen a solar eclipse?
How many have tried?

I mean for real. Pictures are beautiful but don't approach the impact of the real thing. M31 is there. M42 (Orion nebula) is there. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

For some it only takes a moonless night. For others it takes a moonless night and a drive to escape city lights. But they are there and they are quite...awesome.

We have to disagree on that Phage most people on here unlike you me and the other astronomy buffs would be totally underwhelmed by the real thing because they are used to seeing high quality pictures, Andromeda & M42 a fuzzy patch in the sky, Saturn looks like a fat star, at best a small telescope will show the rings etc.

I mean here is Jupiter the fat looking star (overexposed) because I was exposing for stars with the Moon about to rise below it .



Before that I took this Image .



Orion rising you can see his sword were M42 is, also the V shape of Taurus above.

I like you and a few others on here know our way around the sky and the Members Asrtophotography thread shows we know how to take pictures.

I paid a visit last year to a local Observatory they had a few open nights very large crowds of public wanting to have a look through the 10" refractor they have, well people walking by me said an hour to see that (Jupiter & Moons) and it's not even in colour

That's what can happen.

That is simply beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

This is how you do astrophotography on the cheap... Stack like a biatch.



If you can get the image light cone on the sensor even adequate enough to crop out, you can get good images. As long as you have a fast lens and a lens that can reach.

Stacking works in other areas of photography, you can pull out a license plate with multiple frames (even from video), just align them and stack them, and pull out more detail.

SonoftheSun
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Mind blown. Very Very Cool !!

The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are thus expected to collide in about 3.75 or 4.5 billion years

en.wikipedia.org...


It's approaching at 300 Kilometers/second...

Will be one Gigantic Firework !!

S&F.

Typically the stars and planets in a galaxy "collision" never touch each other.

reply to post by wmd_2008


I wish that there was a dark sky site near me. I have to drive forever and a day to find a spot that is clear and dark enough to see the stars...and I live in the "country". When I was an astronomy student I would get so giddy when we were allowed to observe. Space is fantastic.

Beautiful picture!

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Collision is a bit of a misnomer, since not much will really collide (the stars are so far apart that collisions are unlikely, though eventually the black holes will merge. It's more like a gravitational dance that will last several billion years, than a collision.

reply to post by Bone75

Typically the stars and planets in a galaxy "collision" never touch each other.

Thank you both for correcting my ignorance.

So no fireworks but I like a gravitational dance just as much.... except that since the expiry date on our Sun seems to be around the same time frame, no one will really get to see it.

Shame.

reply to post by wmd_2008


Stunning.

WOW, I never knew that Andromeda would be that large in the sky if we could see the whole thing.

This is an amazing change in perspective for me.

So here is the local group.



And here is near universe.



How big would the Virgo cluster look if we could see it?

reply to post by wmd_2008


OH WOW! You see that much in the sky?!

I can see the big dipper and Orion's belt on a good night. I don't see many starts where I am. Too much light pollution.


I have always wanted to go live in Colorado in the mountains and have a roof made of thick glass so I could see the starts all the time at night.

reply to post by kathat


Have seen it and used it!


M42 The Orion Nebula.

Now that was done from 15 pictures using DSS, they were taken with a 70-300 zoom lens at 210mm focal length but what really surprised me was the exposure was iso 1600 f4.5 for only 2 seconds each. Two second exposures so the stars wouldn't trail.

Taken from my back garden which gave a good result considering my house is in the middle of a housing estate of 150 house in a small town 10 miles from a large city.

Here is a frame (resized) I used in the stack to give you an idea of the light pollution.



Using the right techniques you still can get some usable images even in towns.

For light pollution make a gradient from a gaussian blurred image with areas of interest and bright areas rubbed out. Such as nebula or it will be eaten alive in LP removal. I also use a cheap 2" Skywatcher LP filter (dirt cheap) on a step down ring (the thread is 48mm) and on a crop sensor you get NO vignetting at all. You will have to adjust colour balance. Also use Lightroom for noise removal, it has killer noise removal algorithms in LR.

With 20 lights stacked you can pick up all nebula in orion, even Horse head , on an unmodified DSLR but Banards loop maybe not as easy due to cut off in Ha lines.

kathat
For light pollution make a gradient from a gaussian blurred image with areas of interest and bright areas rubbed out. Such as nebula or it will be eaten alive in LP removal. I also use a cheap 2" Skywatcher LP filter (dirt cheap) on a step down ring (the thread is 48mm) and on a crop sensor you get NO vignetting at all. You will have to adjust colour balance. Also use Lightroom for noise removal, it has killer noise removal algorithms in LR.

With 20 lights stacked you can pick up all nebula in orion, even Horse head , on an unmodified DSLR but Banards loop maybe not as easy due to cut off in Ha lines.

edit on 27-3-2014 by kathat because: (no reason given)

You mean something like this! 20 seconds f4 at iso 3200 to really show the pollution.

Before


After


That's from 1 frame not a stack.

reply to post by Phage


No they don't, do they?

Now that I'm a bit more solvent, I can finally, finally!!, get a good telescope...

reply to post by seagull


Do you have a nice camera to attach to it you may as well take a picture as well as looking!

reply to post by wmd_2008


Absolutely beautiful! Thanks for posting this! I would love love love to see more of your photography!

Stunning!!

reply to post by wmd_2008


I will have. I've a friend who is into all things cameras. He thinks he can probably build one for me, for next to nothing, other than beer and pizza...which might cost more than the cameras .

It's been a long time since I've done any real skywatching/stargazing... Looking forward to it. Living as I do in a somewhat rural area, or at least very close to one... Dark sky, or dark enough, won't be too hard to come by.

Jennyfrenzy
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Absolutely beautiful! Thanks for posting this! I would love love love to see more of your photography!

Stunning!!

Thanks for that various pictures in my posts on this thread a few above your post,showing how I deal with light pollution.

wmd.

Oh my, lovely!

Making this the desktop for my home computer, also the one at work too

SPace sure is beautiful