First Attempt at Andromeda

BeardyGrumps@lemmy.dbzer0.com to pics@lemmy.world – 272 points –
i.imgur.com

Sony a7iii with 200-600 lens. 60 x 1 minute exposures.

23

So lame that everybody takes pictures of it from exactly the same angle 🙄

Seriously though not sure why all images are in this orientation. From where I am (South Germany) it’s actually upside down. Was told to rotate it 180 degrees as that the way it’s normally depicted..

Woah! I wasn't expecting much when I loaded the image ... but this is awesome! Though, Andromeda is surprisingly big in the sky right ... like bigger than the moon??

Thank you. I think it’s small in the sky and quite difficult to see. I used a star finder app on the phone; starting at 200mm until I found it then zoomed in and took some test shots at 600mm until it was in the frame. It’s still kind of a fuzzy blur in the frame. Then set it to take the images and it’s only once you stack the images and then stretch that the details really come out. It’s really great fun from start to finish. (My first edits were dreadful; learnt a lot through a discord forum on how to do the processing)

Oh wow, that's amazing! What always bothered me about pictures like this....is seeing all of the stars in the background. Like, this is a whole different galaxy than ours....and there's soooo many stars/galaxies beyond that. Makes my head hurt when you really start to think about it.

It blow my mind too. The scale of everything is just crazy. To think this is over 2.5 million light years away and the number of stars in it is about double the Milky Way. All the stars we see are closer and the galaxy is much further in the background. Just been watching a fantastic YouTube video about Andromeda and the whole space/time phenomenon is just mind blowing.. What a time to be alive to be able to capture and see these things without specialised equipment.. Amazing!

Wow. And this is just with the telephoto lens? That's incredible! Did you have it on a motorized mount?

Yes, I had dabbled a bit with astro photography with wide angle lenses and thought the zoom might be too heavy for the mount. Used a Sky Adventurer 2 tracker and had to use an additional weight to balance the lens.

Really happy with the way it turned out.

Another excellent space shot, keep ‘em coming!

Thank you! Can’t wait for a clear sky to try some more. Next target will be the horse head nebula..