That is indeed M31 galaxy, it is one of the easiest to take photos, also Orion Nebula, M42 is quite easy, M31 is bit harder to find at least with my equipment. Billions of stars in each galaxy and many galaxies, each star has probably at least one planet, probably more. Distances are just so insane that even at speed of light it would take too long to reach any of those places, for example M31 is closest large galaxy and it would take 2.5 million years to reach it with speed of light, that is longer than modern human has existed, our science is a lot less than 1000 years old, cars, planes, spacecrafts under 200 years, even if there would be other simracers at M31, they might be long gone already, even whole M31 could have been disappeared long ago, what we see is how it was 2.5 million years ago. That is crazy really. If you start really thinking about it, soon you end up into situation like that machine put persons in Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy, where it made clear what is one's person in relation of the whole universe, how tiny one is compared to world and how tiny are our issues compared to that vastness of everything. If someone has bit large bones, certainly it has meaningfulness of nothing in relation to whole universe. That, I think, is the relativity of everything.
Ok, let me get this straight, You shot a galaxy with your camera and I cant see one with my (small) telescope?
Yeah, you can see a LOT more with camera, really lot. This is only 18mm objective (Actually Nikon kit lens 18-55mm), but with 18 minutes of exposure: M42 should be really easy for you to spot, check out star charts from net, here is quick guide, spot three equally spaced three stars from middle of photo, then follow bit down and you see bright smudge, point telescope to that smudge. When you point your telescope to it, you probably can't see this: That was shot with Nikon D40 and 75-300mm Tamron cheap objective, also cheapest motor tripod EQ1 was used. I now have Nikon D3100, but it is crap for shooting stars, too much noise, so impossible to get any sharpness, which kind of killed that hobby, still have D40, but it died at thunderstorm as I was shooting flashes and sudden shower of water surprised me.
Thanks for sharing those pics and info jtbo. This year I started teaching photography in school so I'm trying to soak in as much information as possible. I taught history for 16 years so it is a new ballgame with new rules.
Wow! I`m really impressed with your photography there jtbo. Excellent stuff indeed. I`m a bit of a photographer myself but have never managed to capture such awesome aurora and stars/galaxy shots. A few of my shots at my flickr site with some pics of the moon there (I love the moon, such an awesome sight in the night sky) Taken with a Nikon D90 and various lenses... Thanks for sharing your photos... you got any more to show? Maybe we should have a photography thread...
Thx Only one thing is certain, if one stays indoors, he can't take photos and if one does not take photos he can't take good ones either. These are something not everyone can see, here summer nights are too bright to spot them, so we get quite short time when you can actually see them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud Around 80% of my photos are crap, 19% are perhaps ok, with 1% or less might be better than that, so I shoot tens of thousands photos each year, gets me out and quite often need to walk quite a bit for good place Now with astronomy stuff, cameras etc I carry nearly 20kg of stuff, do that at deep snow middle of forests etc. and that will get weight down quite quickly. I take better pics at night than day though, but I guess we should not form photography club here, even it would be quite nice to have...
Now maybe I get it, motorized tripod so you can follow its orbit? Same as earth rotation I suppose. How much time did you expose? Also are you sure you didnt lost some parts yourself at -26c?!
Can't remember how much exposure, but certainly over 5 minutes. Idea is to take several long exposure shots and stack them together with special software, like deep space stacker. That way one can reduce noise and get lot more detail to photos. Yeah, EQ is for equatorial, so it attempts to keep camera pointed to star even earth spins. It is really fast that stars move Even slightest wind or cloud will cause issues so not all shots are usable, so only best will be used to make final image. I have had my memory lost, but I think it did happen long before that. We do get close to -40C here at coldest winter nights. Earlier this month here was already -32C so -26C is not extremely cold, just bit colder than typical night. Western coast of our country is then lot warmer.
-26C is a pleasant temperature in northern Finland In Greece you maybe never experienced such cold though.. which I envy because I like hot weather..
Bicycling at -40C is also interesting, going fast downhill will give one very interesting sensations, soft clothing becomes hard, eyes freezes open, but it is good training for body, even small distance feels like going far When I was young, I did once bicycle to Oulu, it was about 40km where I was living then, some -15C when I started and got to -25C, at one point I lost some plastic parts from gear changing mechanism as I changed gears, too cold for any plastics. Total trip around 80km, I just wonder how I could do that, now 10km feels like it would kills me Grease melts with heat, sports in cold seem not to have quite the effect of weight loss at least for myself
Thanks for the negative rep low rider and hoser. I don't know what your problems are but I would bet that you are probably lonely people.
*shivers* *shivers* But since you enjoy astronomical observation, I should share a story. My father-in-law used to be a sea captain, he has travelled around the globe many times, being a past generation fellow, he had a good understanding of stars. He bragged a lot about it, he is very quick to point me at the North star at our summer house and really knows movements of moon and when we should expect its faces. I took the telescope there, as it is a small village with small light clutter, and I had many wonderfull views of the moon Curiously, every night, a bright light came up at the night sky and when I asked him, he always exclaimed "its a satellite!". I targeted it with my telescope, the thing was obviously not a star, as it wasnt blinking, and I hoped I could see its shape, as I knew only Sputnic was like a sphere. I was curius too that the thing was orbiting, and I knew most tv satellites remain fixed with orbits earth. Looking at it for long, I noticed some smaller lights around it. I figured they must be distance stars, shining their dim light. But, after some time, these stars changed position around satellite and then again, not only changing positions, but also changing their numbers! Well, this couldnt be possible, as distance stars have more or less same orbit around earth and then it went crystal clear!!! I remembered I saw in a newspaper, Gallileo's sketches of his observation of Jupiter, where Jupiter's moons, changing their position around the planet, helped him formulate his theory of earths rotation! So, I rediscovered Jupiter lolol. (so, when next time my father-in-law said "look, satellite just came up!", I just replied "oh yeah ") P.S. Observations were taken at +38C at nightime
