After two years of trying, finally took a pic of the Andromeda Galaxy I’m proud of (OC)

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by MrJackDog
image showing After two years of trying, finally took a pic of the Andromeda Galaxy I’m proud of (OC)

MrJackDog on April 6th, 2022 at 22:33 UTC »

For more of my struggles and successes with the rewarding and frustrating hobby of astrophotography, check out my Instagram: @brennangilmorephoto or my website.

This photo was taken with a four inch telescope over the course of multiple nights from my backyard near Charlottesville, Virginia, US.

The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years from our solar system, and is the closest spiral galaxy to us. Probably looks a lot like our own Milky Way. Probably some dork taking a picture of us the same time I was taking this picture of them. Of course the same time means 2.5 million years in our future. Also, fun fact: we are heading towards each other at 113km/s and are due to collide in 5 billion years. (Although the distance between stars is so great there will be little if any actual interaction).

Another fun aspect of this photo: there are 24 million pixels (roughly) in this image and around 1 trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy which takes up half the image. This means there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 21,000 stars per pixel in the galactic glow.

Full resolution

Equipment details:

Equipment: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro, Esprit100, Chroma RGB and 3nm Ha; SW Eq6R Pro.

Integration: 90x 120s each RGB filter; 6x600s Ha filter; 25 darks, 10 flats, 10 dark flats.

apittsburghoriginal on April 6th, 2022 at 23:02 UTC »

Anybody know what the two red blips are in the second ring of gas, directly to the left of Andromeda’s center?

-Davo on April 7th, 2022 at 01:13 UTC »

Somewhere in that Galaxy is another life form looking at us posting in their own reddit a picture of our Galaxy, and some alien is responding that somewhere in the milky way is a life form looking at them and posting on reddit while someone comments about a life form in their Galaxy is posting a picture of their Galaxy and someone is commenting that