Sunday, September 12, 2010

Andromeda Strained

I have always been fascinated by the stars.  I love being able to find the planets.  I have always wanted a camera that would image the stars.  Now I have one. 

Ever since, about 17 years ago, I first found the Andromeda Galaxy with my unaided eyes and then binoculars, I wanted to take a picture of it.  My film camera would have done it, but doing the whole “writing down exposures” thing and then developing them…well, that was NOT me.  Plus, it would have been a great waste of film and money to process it.  Tonight, I gave it a shot with the old D-90.  and…

 

 

I was successful!

Andromeda

See that smudge?  YEP!  That is an entire OTHER galaxy!  2.5million light years away! One of the most distant objects visible by the unaided human eye!

Andromeda2

Here is a professional picture of it.

andromeda galaxy

I also got a picture of Jupiter.  Always easy to identify because it has moons, here it is below.  If I were to take another tomorrow the moons would be in a different spot, and there are four of them…  still, I only got two tonight.  See below.

DSC_0031

Here it is blown up.

jupiter

Now all i need is a telescope with a motorized tripod!

Have I mentioned how much I love my camera?

2 comments:

About the Sleepy Dreamer said...

Very cool! My dad used to show us the stars through his telescope when we were younger. I miss that.

Lorrene said...

Powerful !! I am impressed.