A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

[ajeff]

... Light left this Galaxy to be captured by anyone keen enough to be looking for it.

Its a huge photo, so I will provide a link:

http://home.comcast.net/~slitherjef/...o/m31frame.jpg

Over 2 million light years away in Andromeda is a Galaxy with the Catalog number, M31. I shot this data last year November 2007 with my 200mm lens and canon 30D. I shot 10 exposures from my back yard at 60sec each. I loaded the data in photoshop and went to work creating a decent image for what little data I had.

Well, tonight, since I was bored had a new stacking program that stacks the files for me. So I gave that a try, and with a little processing and the help from Noel Carboni's actions, I managed to come up with the above photo. Its not the full 10 images I fed into the program to stack, it rejected 5 of those frames, but I thought I would share anyway. Hope you enjoy

[llovelace]

Wow! That's beautiful

[mainbutter]

is that the galaxy scheduled to collide with ours some billion or so years from now?

[Pandora]

Isn't nature wonderful?!
It's breathtaking

Since we're sharing...

http://www.bav-astro.de/sterne/monv8...e-20040304.jpg

[ajeff]

is that the galaxy scheduled to collide with ours some billion or so years from now?

Yes, and it should be spectacular. Too bad no one will be around to see it

[ajeff]

Isn't nature wonderful?!
It's breathtaking

Since we're sharing...

http://www.bav-astro.de/sterne/monv8...e-20040304.jpg

Extra credit if you can tell me what that is and / or its designation

[Hardwikk]

That photo belongs in a book (that was meant as a compliment BTW). It's a very nice and scenic shot. With all the light-pollution here you can barely see the stars so it's hard to take a picture like that one here. And it's pretty sad to know that even if you leave this galaxy you still have to travel 2 million light years to get to the next one (which is like getting pulled by the Array 27 times).

[ajeff]

Well, since no one guessed what:
http://www.bav-astro.de/sterne/monv8...e-20040304.jpg was, I will go ahead and tell you

The photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, the designation is, V838 Monocerotis the object is actualy a light echo located in the dim constellation, Monoceros

More info on V838 Mon can be found:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...06/50/image/a/

[littleindiangirl]

Sweet pic! I love astronomy.

[monk90222]

That is awesome. I can just imagine what is out there!