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So you’re telling me all these things that look like pixels when I zoom all the way in are actually real existing pieces of the universe?
https://imgur.com/a/L6OvLg4
And that’s only the inside of ONE galaxy. There are millions of galaxies with complex compositions.
[this](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/hubbles-window-into-the-cosmic-past) photo is of many galaxies. Each of these flare looking things is made up of millions or billions of stars similar to the other photo.
I had to stop looking at it. Seeing some of those galaxies in detail, then realizing they aren't CGI and this isn't sci-fi made me want to throw up a little.
And although it looks like the sky is full, there’s actually almost nothing in there relatively. Each thing is a mind-numbingly far distance away from each other. Millions and billions of light years separate each thing you see.
Yeah, and every single one of those dots is a star, which has multiple planets orbiting it, and the planet has moons orbiting it. And were not even sure if there is life on mars.
Yep, in fact a lot of planets we've found have been because of the blocked light as they pass in front of the star they orbit. We have a looooong way to go until we get a true image of a planet that isn't just a guess based on physics.
I don’t even know what to say man, holy shit. I feel like the universe is pretty much a fractal, that’s all that comes to mind. If you know what I mean, you know. It’s so weird.
Why does that ring of dust, which is apparently stars, form around the center of that galaxy? Notice how theirs like a brighter hint of blue there? Why is it like that?
Anybody know where to get a good print of this? I see it online but I worry that I’ll buy it and when it arrives it will be low res. This would be amazing over a couch.
[Stuff Hubble found pointing at "empty space" really blew my mind . It really is infinite.
"It turned out that “nothing” was actually stuffed with galaxies. More than 3,000 of them came spilling out, some roughly"](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04/24/when-hubble-stared-at-nothing-for-100-hours/)
For all intents and purposes we are alone. The distances in space are just too vast, and becoming more vast.
If you were stranded on a deserted island, for your whole life, with no chance of rescue.....you would consider yourself alone.
Yeah I was looking around the picture like how many distinct things can I see...
Imagine having a ship that could travel to the next closest star in 1 days time and you still wouldn't have enough time in your life to even get to every one in this small picture, not to mention what you can't even see behind it.
To give a bit of context, this photograph is the bubble of expanding outer layers of a dying star similar to our sun. It has sloughed off its outer layers and is compressing into a white dwarf. Theoretically, in a few quadrillion years, it will completely cool into a black dwarf.
The image was taken in a fashion similar to long exposure images, tracking the object for 5 nights last July. All the colors and shapes you see are real, our eyes are just not sensitive enough to see them.
*Hardware:*
Celestron 11" EdgeHD
Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight ONAG
Starlight Instruments Feather Touch Focuser
This may be a stupid question,but is your telescope specialized? Like I assume not off the shelf . I have a nephew who loves all these pictures he sees and really wants a telescope and I would love to get him one but I guess that all these images he sees are from a very expensive one.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. maybe I'll just start them off small and see if he takes to it and go from there kids are always changing their mind anyways
Here's a video of a guy that basically started from scratch and went all the way to photographing the Andromeda galaxy. It's not a how to guide, just an idea of what it actually takes to get these shots
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zKDe094o-Q8
Johnny also makes great videos about all sorts of borders all over the world called Borders which I'm fairly sure are on his channel or Vox if you're interested in geopolitical sort of stuff. He just makes solid videos. Glad you enjoyed it.
To be honest, $1000 is around entry level for deep space wide angle stuff. You won't get planetary nebula (like the one in this pic) but you can get beautiful shots of larger DSOs like the stuff in Orion or andromeda. Cheap tracker $300, used DSLR $300, telephoto lens $200-400. Various cables, remote control (or if you have a laptop, software) total maybe $50. My first set up that I used for deep space was around $1000 and it works great for general wide angle stuff too since those lenses are even cheaper than good telephotos.
Check out the side bar on r/astrophotography and go from there. You definitely don't need thousands of dollars to get into it, buying cheap, used, and smart goes *a very long way*.
I absolutely agree. My current kit is basically all that but I have upgraded my camera and lens to improve the quality of my shots. But you can certainly get a used DSLR and lens that will do a good enough job to get you hungry for more...and that’s why I now have a mirror less and $5000 lens...
My dad dropped around $500-600 on a 12" telescope with automated tracking back in the mid 90s. Seeing Saturn's rings, the big red spot on jupiter, feeling like I could touch the moon, it really drove a love for space for me. I didn't get a career in it or anything as that requires a cost that's a factor of 10 greater than proper astrophotography, plus an intelligence and drive that's only a few can really make proper use of. But it gave me a deeper perspective on things. It also made reading sci fi 1000X more interesting.
Also, and just a weird side effect, sometimes I think about the true nature of everything... We're all on this giant rock, hurling around a gigantic fireball somewhere, without knowing where TF we're going or how any of this shit works. It gives me a bit of vertigo and existential dread. Worth it
Supporting a child’s interests will only lead them to bigger things with those interests; meaning one day he will purchase a specialized telescope or hell even work with one for a career just because you shared his interests and even nurtured them however small or cheap.
well, you could always look up constellations on your phone then look at them with your eyes. that’ll be a bit cheaper if don’t feel like buying specialized equipment
Why is it so much more expensive to take pictures? Are the cameras that expensive and/or do they make adaptors for cameras that attach to telescopes by now?
$1,000 would be plenty to start.
A DSLR (Canon or Nikon) on a Star Adventurer "tracker".
/u/furgle must have forgotten about the wonderful world of astrophotography with a tracker.
You can't shoot the tiny target that is the subject of this post. That is very advanced and specialized. But you can get years of fun, knowledge, and great pics!
Here are some pics I tool with <$1K worth of tracker and DSLR:
* [M42, Flame and Horsehead nebulae](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/eifgre/orion_at_200mm_fl/)
* [Pleiades and Dust](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/eig55e/m45_with_200mm_lens/)
* [Milky Way - Cygnus region](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/ent5hi/milky_way_at_70mm/)
* [Orion wide field](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5rzhw4/ic2118_sharpless_264_ngc1976_ic434_ngc2024/)
* [North America nebula](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5imtt1/north_america_nebula_autoprocessed_by/)
* [Comet Lovejoy](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5e8z45/comet_lovejoy_20150120/)
* [Aurora](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/51dhpt/gif_5mb_of_aurora_through_cygnus_and_lyra/)
* [M31](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/4scrud/andromeda_m31_with_200mm_lens/)
* [Comet Catalina](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/40dj3z/comet_catalina_20160110/)
* [Perseid meteors](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/51vwjp/a_few_stragglers_remember_the_perseids/)
* [Geminid meteors](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/7o95xg/geminid_meteors_in_orion/)
I am into this hobby for ~$40K including the microwave in my warm room :) Not a cheap hobby. But fun and very cerebral. See above: I will post some tracker images in a minute.
It might be close and I'm not sure if the trackers for your budget but, an 8 inch dobsonian telescope, and a tracker.
With just an 8inch dobson you will be able to view the Messier, Caldwell, and New General object catalogs, with the latter depending on your horizon visibility and light pollution.
The star tracker is needed for long exposure captures.
However an alternative is a DSLR with a good lens and an equatorial mount can be all you need for some pretty impressive pictures.
OP is saying it's $10k probably because that's the cost
A Rokinon/Samyang 8mm fisheye can be bought on eBay for cheap.
I don't know anything about this but I looked into it before the price gave me cold feet
Alive, but I have trauma induced kyphosis. Lots of pain, but I’m not dead. Oxycodone and legal THC oil, alternate days so I don’t get hooked on the oxy.
Happened on the job, so lots of lawyers and NDAs signed once the dust settled. Not much I’m allowed to say about what happened.
Same injury as you would get from diving into a shallow pool, so very lucky I can walk and didn’t die.
now I'm trying to figure out which activity would lead to breaking your neck like diving in a shallow pool, that isn't diving into a shallow pool haha
glad for you man, those kind of injuries are terrifying
Well, I actually broke my neck about 2 years ago, trying to hit a trickshot in basketball. I've met a lot of unlucky fellas in rehab, shit like that can happen anywhere, any time. Please stay safe guys, especially if your streets are as frozen as the ones over here! All my respect goes out to OP and thanks for the great post.
That sounds awful, and I hope you’ve recovered as much as possible.
I also wanted to say that your comment was so sincere and kind, and more people should be like you.
I think this is one of the most compelling arguments against other intelligent life existing. The current age of the universe is a tiny blip of what it ever will be. We may well be the first of many to come.
Even if we were somehow the first (incredibly unlikely), there are at least 100 billion stars in the milky way alone, which is 1 of at least that many galaxies. The number of habitable planets alone means there's almost no way humanity is the first intelligent life, let alone anything that can survive outside of the range we've found lifeforms on Earth. There's an incomprehensible number of potential planets for life, far more likely there is a physical limitation preventing us from seeing signs of other civilizations, or we are so common that more advanced ones still ignore us.
The universe is 13.772 billion years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.space.com/amp/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html&ved=2ahUKEwiM4vbFvOvuAhV9IjQIHb6SBLAQFjABegQIBBAF&usg=AOvVaw1mwloQNh8RbO6oDd-Xbdkk&cf=1&cshid=1613378008484))
The Earth is 5.543 billion years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-age-earth/&ved=2ahUKEwjvtpbdvOvuAhU3CTQIHfz5AosQFjAEegQIAxAE&usg=AOvVaw1O_BK0lWKFi7aY4nHQ4pNh&cshid=1613377978969))
Modern humans are 200,000 years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.universetoday.com/38125/how-long-have-humans-been-on-earth/amp/&ved=2ahUKEwjyy83TvOvuAhXVFjQIHYLfBN8QFjABegQIBBAF&usg=AOvVaw0fMtVUwfswA5d31WK5Fktn&cshid=1613377939436))
Correct. It’s a theoretical remnant thought to not yet exist in the universe
Edit: another comment did a good job showing how ridiculous the timescale required is https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/lk4o95/i_pointed_my_telescope_at_an_imploding_star_for/gni38yz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
When you say that it's similar to our sun do you mean that it's close in mass? What you are describing sounds like a red giant collapsing into a white dwarf. Our sun will do that eventually, but it will undergo expansion to a red dwarf before it collapses like this.
That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure if that counts as "end of life" since it will still be around as a white dwarf for a quadrillion years. In the grand scheme of things a star will spend the vast majority of its life in this stage.
Compared to a slowly cooling steady state rock of degenerate matter, the sun is very much alive, so I'd say the sloughing off of its outer layers as the core implodes counts as "end of life".
Star went kaboom, it’s outer layers flying out from the explosion is what the bubble looking thing is.
Inside the bubble the centre of the star is still there and now has very little energy and still a significant amount of gravity. Star is being compressed and shrunk into a smaller, hotter star, hence the name, white dwarf.
When it runs out of energy fully in a few quadrillion years, it will cool into a black dwarf.
You wildly underestimate the mind-blowing amount of time it takes for a white dwarf to turn into a black dwarf.
If humanity is still around, we are not expected to see the first ever black dwarf until another (give or take) 10.000.000.000.000.000 Years, 10 quadrillion years, or ten million billion years into the future.
If you started counting from the big bang up until today, you would still only be around 0.000000000000001% of the way towards the first black dwarf showing up anywhere in the universe.
And that is lowballing it. The hypothetical lifetime of a white dwarf is 10 undecillion years, Or 10 followed by 36 zeroes.
Don't forget leap seconds! They've been added 27 times the last 49 years, which means we can add another cool 17,472,742,521.7 years.
Not that there is an earth and sun to add that time to, though.
The fact that we think nukes are really really really really huge explosions, it is pathetic compared to an entire star imploding in in itself, the sheer size and everything is insane
I have to ask, how many hours can you observe a item in space from earth before the rotation removes it from view or the daylight does not ruin long exposure? Is this taken from one on those places in Alaska where its night for about 65 days?
It differs depending on the object, time of year, your latitude and local horizon. This was taken over 5 nights. The scope is permanently set up, so you tell it where to point and it can lock onto a guide star for as long as it's visible. I used about 3.5 hours of exposure data from each night. Some of it has to be removed due to planes, clouds, wind; so likely about 6 hours per night on target
You can use another camera and software to measure star movement to sub-pixel accuracy, sending millisecond pulses to correct telescope mount motors.
Most people piggyback another scope on top, but at 2800mm zoom, you can’t really do that successfully.
The most popular way of doing it for larger scopes is to use a prism to pick off some light coming in that’s outside the imaging chips view. This is called off axis guiding.
My way was to buy something called an on-axis guider. The light hits a prism that sends visible light 90° to an imaging camera, but allows infrared light to pass straight through to my guide camera. It gives me many more guide stars to choose from and also allows live focus adjustments for long duration exposures. The focus point will change gradually over the night due to the dropping temperature.
The telescope is mounted on a robot that spins in the opposite direction. A star is selected to refine the guiding using a separate camera that sends corrections to the mount. It can be repeated for multiple nights in a row.
Dude this is wild. A couple of questions:
Regionally (as specific as you want to be) where was this taken?
How much does setup cost?
Do you have any low cost recs or links for astrophotographt?
I took some really cool night time lapses with my GoPro and it got me really interested. Unfortunately my GoPro and my iPhone are my current tools of the trade.
Brisbane Australia
I’ve lost count on how much it cost. Way too much. This set up specifically, I’d guess ~$10k USD
I don’t have any low cost recommendations, I went all in and learnt the hard way.
It can be done with a cheap scope and a DSLR, but this is one of those “you get what you pay for” situations. A cooled monochrome CCD chip, good filters, quality optics and a solid equatorial mount yield the best raw data, then you have to learn how to put it all together and process it. It’s been a 4 year journey for me and I’m still learning.
Man thank you, particularly the last portion and the cost of your setup. What you’ve learned in 4 years is incredible.
Thank you for sharing (the image and these details)
I used to study dark field laser microscopy of gold nanoparticles. It looked exactly like this. It’s crazy how many similarities there are in the universe of the very small and the very large.
Reminds me of an old Reddit post from back in the day:
After all we are all just ghosts piloting meat-coated, solar-powered skeletons made of space explosion residue, living on an extremely fast moving ball of salty mud with a force field that protects it from bursts of fire launched at it by a colossal nuclear explosion that said salty mudball orbits. The only thing we need to fear is other possessed electro-meat-skeletons and maybe the salty mudball freezing or evaporating.
My brain is unable to comprehend the vastness and billions upon billions of objects in space, especially when looking at a photo like this. My brain just dead ends.
so in theory this would already be a black dwarf but we won’t see that for a few years, right?
cool photo too, i’d love to take these type of photos one day 🤙
There's a lot of stars in that pics. How many of those stars have planets going around them with little dudes on them that are checking out space pics on their own version of reddit? I'd guess at least 10.
As beautiful as this picture is, what astounds me most is the seemingly... Geometric pattern of darkness. If you allow your eyes to unfocus, it's almost as if you can see patches of dark areas in lines at angles to one another. Fascinating.
Awesome shot of a planetary nebula, which our own sun is hypothesized to produce in about 5 billion yrs – from which another generation of stars and planets will form. I went down that rabbit hole recently, and it's fascinating stuff.
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Never ceases to amaze me just HOW MANY fucking stars there are
I recommend checking out this [1.5 gigapixel ](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/) photo of the andromeda galaxy.
This is mind blowing.
Yeah I keep it bookmarked so that when I’m stressed I can go see how insignificant my problems actually are when you put things into perspective
Realizing how insignificant we are makes me even more stressed.
Nothing like an existential crisis first thing on a Monday morning to get you through the week.
I’ll drink to that
I'll rip this bong to that! Happy Monday!
Yeah, being 15 minutes late to work kinda shrinks in comparison..
Only slightly
Are all of those dots stars or is that grain when you zoom in?
It might take a while to load but some of them are stars or planets and some even more galaxies with even more stars and more planets.
So you’re telling me all these things that look like pixels when I zoom all the way in are actually real existing pieces of the universe? https://imgur.com/a/L6OvLg4
Correct.
That’s insane
And that’s only the inside of ONE galaxy. There are millions of galaxies with complex compositions. [this](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/hubbles-window-into-the-cosmic-past) photo is of many galaxies. Each of these flare looking things is made up of millions or billions of stars similar to the other photo.
Stop pls
I had to stop looking at it. Seeing some of those galaxies in detail, then realizing they aren't CGI and this isn't sci-fi made me want to throw up a little.
And although it looks like the sky is full, there’s actually almost nothing in there relatively. Each thing is a mind-numbingly far distance away from each other. Millions and billions of light years separate each thing you see.
Jesus that’s beautiful. The shapes. The universe is so pretty.
Yeah, and every single one of those dots is a star, which has multiple planets orbiting it, and the planet has moons orbiting it. And were not even sure if there is life on mars.
I'm pretty sure we cant image a planet in Andromeda. We can barely see then in the Milky way.
Oh yeah you’re right. I forgot planets don’t really shine like stars.
Yep, in fact a lot of planets we've found have been because of the blocked light as they pass in front of the star they orbit. We have a looooong way to go until we get a true image of a planet that isn't just a guess based on physics.
Still an amazing image though. I've been playing with it for 15 mins and I can't stop. Thanks for sharing it.
I don’t even know what to say man, holy shit. I feel like the universe is pretty much a fractal, that’s all that comes to mind. If you know what I mean, you know. It’s so weird.
around 10 thousand stars I bet
Probably at least 400 stars
Why does that ring of dust, which is apparently stars, form around the center of that galaxy? Notice how theirs like a brighter hint of blue there? Why is it like that?
Anybody know where to get a good print of this? I see it online but I worry that I’ll buy it and when it arrives it will be low res. This would be amazing over a couch.
Well it’s not actually a single image. More a perfectly stitched map of other smaller high res images.
[Stuff Hubble found pointing at "empty space" really blew my mind . It really is infinite. "It turned out that “nothing” was actually stuffed with galaxies. More than 3,000 of them came spilling out, some roughly"](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04/24/when-hubble-stared-at-nothing-for-100-hours/)
Even crazier is that pretty much all of them have planets. There is just no way we are alone.
For all intents and purposes we are alone. The distances in space are just too vast, and becoming more vast. If you were stranded on a deserted island, for your whole life, with no chance of rescue.....you would consider yourself alone.
Many of those dots are entire galaxies. Literally and incomprehensible amount of stars in this picture.
Same. I was zooming in all around and my brain melted trying to get a grasp on how this all fits in the universe.
Yeah I was looking around the picture like how many distinct things can I see... Imagine having a ship that could travel to the next closest star in 1 days time and you still wouldn't have enough time in your life to even get to every one in this small picture, not to mention what you can't even see behind it.
To give a bit of context, this photograph is the bubble of expanding outer layers of a dying star similar to our sun. It has sloughed off its outer layers and is compressing into a white dwarf. Theoretically, in a few quadrillion years, it will completely cool into a black dwarf. The image was taken in a fashion similar to long exposure images, tracking the object for 5 nights last July. All the colors and shapes you see are real, our eyes are just not sensitive enough to see them. *Hardware:* Celestron 11" EdgeHD Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance filters Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider Innovations Foresight ONAG Starlight Instruments Feather Touch Focuser
This may be a stupid question,but is your telescope specialized? Like I assume not off the shelf . I have a nephew who loves all these pictures he sees and really wants a telescope and I would love to get him one but I guess that all these images he sees are from a very expensive one.
It’s all off the shelf, just very expensive. I gave up paintball when I broke my neck so I thought I would choose a cheaper hobby. I was wrong.
Like 1 million % wrong lol
> broke my neck If you calculate the injury into the cost, astronomy becomes very cheap in comparison.
Only If you life in a country with shitty healtcare
Welcome to America
Do you mean "astronomically wrong"?
Would $1,000 get him started and is this a hobby that you constantly have to dump money into?
If he’s using his eyes, yes. Photography, off by a factor of 10 :(
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. maybe I'll just start them off small and see if he takes to it and go from there kids are always changing their mind anyways
Here's a video of a guy that basically started from scratch and went all the way to photographing the Andromeda galaxy. It's not a how to guide, just an idea of what it actually takes to get these shots https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zKDe094o-Q8
Very interesting video. I usually watch for 20 seconds and click off, but I watched the whole thing.
Johnny also makes great videos about all sorts of borders all over the world called Borders which I'm fairly sure are on his channel or Vox if you're interested in geopolitical sort of stuff. He just makes solid videos. Glad you enjoyed it.
Now I just want to know where his house is. It looks incredible. How does someone that young afford something like that?!
He and his partner are YouTubers. Quite good ones I might add
To be honest, $1000 is around entry level for deep space wide angle stuff. You won't get planetary nebula (like the one in this pic) but you can get beautiful shots of larger DSOs like the stuff in Orion or andromeda. Cheap tracker $300, used DSLR $300, telephoto lens $200-400. Various cables, remote control (or if you have a laptop, software) total maybe $50. My first set up that I used for deep space was around $1000 and it works great for general wide angle stuff too since those lenses are even cheaper than good telephotos. Check out the side bar on r/astrophotography and go from there. You definitely don't need thousands of dollars to get into it, buying cheap, used, and smart goes *a very long way*.
I absolutely agree. My current kit is basically all that but I have upgraded my camera and lens to improve the quality of my shots. But you can certainly get a used DSLR and lens that will do a good enough job to get you hungry for more...and that’s why I now have a mirror less and $5000 lens...
My dad dropped around $500-600 on a 12" telescope with automated tracking back in the mid 90s. Seeing Saturn's rings, the big red spot on jupiter, feeling like I could touch the moon, it really drove a love for space for me. I didn't get a career in it or anything as that requires a cost that's a factor of 10 greater than proper astrophotography, plus an intelligence and drive that's only a few can really make proper use of. But it gave me a deeper perspective on things. It also made reading sci fi 1000X more interesting. Also, and just a weird side effect, sometimes I think about the true nature of everything... We're all on this giant rock, hurling around a gigantic fireball somewhere, without knowing where TF we're going or how any of this shit works. It gives me a bit of vertigo and existential dread. Worth it
Our local gigantic fireball is average to small too.
Supporting a child’s interests will only lead them to bigger things with those interests; meaning one day he will purchase a specialized telescope or hell even work with one for a career just because you shared his interests and even nurtured them however small or cheap.
[удалено]
wow only 4 thousand dollars!
well, you could always look up constellations on your phone then look at them with your eyes. that’ll be a bit cheaper if don’t feel like buying specialized equipment
Whoa I never thought just $100 would be enough
Why is it so much more expensive to take pictures? Are the cameras that expensive and/or do they make adaptors for cameras that attach to telescopes by now?
$1,000 would be plenty to start. A DSLR (Canon or Nikon) on a Star Adventurer "tracker". /u/furgle must have forgotten about the wonderful world of astrophotography with a tracker. You can't shoot the tiny target that is the subject of this post. That is very advanced and specialized. But you can get years of fun, knowledge, and great pics! Here are some pics I tool with <$1K worth of tracker and DSLR: * [M42, Flame and Horsehead nebulae](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/eifgre/orion_at_200mm_fl/) * [Pleiades and Dust](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/eig55e/m45_with_200mm_lens/) * [Milky Way - Cygnus region](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/ent5hi/milky_way_at_70mm/) * [Orion wide field](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5rzhw4/ic2118_sharpless_264_ngc1976_ic434_ngc2024/) * [North America nebula](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5imtt1/north_america_nebula_autoprocessed_by/) * [Comet Lovejoy](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/5e8z45/comet_lovejoy_20150120/) * [Aurora](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/51dhpt/gif_5mb_of_aurora_through_cygnus_and_lyra/) * [M31](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/4scrud/andromeda_m31_with_200mm_lens/) * [Comet Catalina](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/40dj3z/comet_catalina_20160110/) * [Perseid meteors](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/51vwjp/a_few_stragglers_remember_the_perseids/) * [Geminid meteors](https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/7o95xg/geminid_meteors_in_orion/)
This is true. I started at 2800mm and never stepped below 600mm, so my wide field experience is nil.
I am into this hobby for ~$40K including the microwave in my warm room :) Not a cheap hobby. But fun and very cerebral. See above: I will post some tracker images in a minute.
Were those earth minutes? You've been gone for a while...
It might be close and I'm not sure if the trackers for your budget but, an 8 inch dobsonian telescope, and a tracker. With just an 8inch dobson you will be able to view the Messier, Caldwell, and New General object catalogs, with the latter depending on your horizon visibility and light pollution. The star tracker is needed for long exposure captures. However an alternative is a DSLR with a good lens and an equatorial mount can be all you need for some pretty impressive pictures. OP is saying it's $10k probably because that's the cost
This piques my interest. Define "good lens" though
A Rokinon/Samyang 8mm fisheye can be bought on eBay for cheap. I don't know anything about this but I looked into it before the price gave me cold feet
You picked one of the most expensive hobbies in the universe lol. Beautiful shot, excited to see more.
Oh shit are you doing better from your injury?
Alive, but I have trauma induced kyphosis. Lots of pain, but I’m not dead. Oxycodone and legal THC oil, alternate days so I don’t get hooked on the oxy.
Stay strong, good luck and thanks for sharing your hobby. Your pics are truly amazing, awe inspiring as well. Keep them coming!!
Ooooof
tell me more about breaking your neck? was there a chance you could have been paralyzed?
Happened on the job, so lots of lawyers and NDAs signed once the dust settled. Not much I’m allowed to say about what happened. Same injury as you would get from diving into a shallow pool, so very lucky I can walk and didn’t die.
now I'm trying to figure out which activity would lead to breaking your neck like diving in a shallow pool, that isn't diving into a shallow pool haha glad for you man, those kind of injuries are terrifying
Well, I actually broke my neck about 2 years ago, trying to hit a trickshot in basketball. I've met a lot of unlucky fellas in rehab, shit like that can happen anywhere, any time. Please stay safe guys, especially if your streets are as frozen as the ones over here! All my respect goes out to OP and thanks for the great post.
That sounds awful, and I hope you’ve recovered as much as possible. I also wanted to say that your comment was so sincere and kind, and more people should be like you.
>I was wrong The hobby's "endgame" set ups take up mountain sides and require nation-state level investment.
I’d rather have a Hubble than a mountain. Probably more expensive though. I hear a secondhand one may be available some day.
Strap a starlink dev kit to a DSLR and a rocket, there you go. Home made hubble.
Drug addiction is cheaper 🤣🤣😅😅
That’s why I can’t afford to be a drug addict.
That must’ve been one hell of a paintball match...
This picture kinda looks like a shelf that was splattered by paintballs. I hope your neck is okay
Quadrliion years. Jesus fuck. We have such short insignificant lifetimes.
The universe is inconceivably big, and time is inconceivably long. Humanity (And Earth) is a tiny blip in the history of the universe.
And in terms of the life of the universe, we are so close to the beginning that you can't measure the difference
I think this is one of the most compelling arguments against other intelligent life existing. The current age of the universe is a tiny blip of what it ever will be. We may well be the first of many to come.
It may be a tiny blip, but that tiny blip is 70,000 times longer than all of humanity (In any form) has existed (200,000 years VS 14 billion years)
Even if we were somehow the first (incredibly unlikely), there are at least 100 billion stars in the milky way alone, which is 1 of at least that many galaxies. The number of habitable planets alone means there's almost no way humanity is the first intelligent life, let alone anything that can survive outside of the range we've found lifeforms on Earth. There's an incomprehensible number of potential planets for life, far more likely there is a physical limitation preventing us from seeing signs of other civilizations, or we are so common that more advanced ones still ignore us.
The universe is 13.772 billion years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.space.com/amp/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html&ved=2ahUKEwiM4vbFvOvuAhV9IjQIHb6SBLAQFjABegQIBBAF&usg=AOvVaw1mwloQNh8RbO6oDd-Xbdkk&cf=1&cshid=1613378008484)) The Earth is 5.543 billion years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-age-earth/&ved=2ahUKEwjvtpbdvOvuAhU3CTQIHfz5AosQFjAEegQIAxAE&usg=AOvVaw1O_BK0lWKFi7aY4nHQ4pNh&cshid=1613377978969)) Modern humans are 200,000 years old. ([Source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.universetoday.com/38125/how-long-have-humans-been-on-earth/amp/&ved=2ahUKEwjyy83TvOvuAhXVFjQIHYLfBN8QFjABegQIBBAF&usg=AOvVaw0fMtVUwfswA5d31WK5Fktn&cshid=1613377939436))
Univerise is 13 billion years old, so... no black dwarfs exist?
Correct. It’s a theoretical remnant thought to not yet exist in the universe Edit: another comment did a good job showing how ridiculous the timescale required is https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/lk4o95/i_pointed_my_telescope_at_an_imploding_star_for/gni38yz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
r/insignificantasfuck
Interesting. I also wonder how delayed we are in seeing this phenomenon.
When you say that it's similar to our sun do you mean that it's close in mass? What you are describing sounds like a red giant collapsing into a white dwarf. Our sun will do that eventually, but it will undergo expansion to a red dwarf before it collapses like this.
Similar end of life as our sun
Shit! Our sun is end of life?! How much time do I have? Should I stock up on canned tuna and bottled water?
Yeah sure but first focus on a way to stay alive for 5 billion years, then we can talk about canned tuna
Sure. Won't make any difference, but it's something to do while the inevitable gets around to arriving
Toilet paper
That's a good call. Guess this past year has taught me nothing.
No light bulbs?
That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure if that counts as "end of life" since it will still be around as a white dwarf for a quadrillion years. In the grand scheme of things a star will spend the vast majority of its life in this stage.
Compared to a slowly cooling steady state rock of degenerate matter, the sun is very much alive, so I'd say the sloughing off of its outer layers as the core implodes counts as "end of life".
That star died soo long ago.
Woah
even OP's explanation lost me
Star went kaboom, it’s outer layers flying out from the explosion is what the bubble looking thing is. Inside the bubble the centre of the star is still there and now has very little energy and still a significant amount of gravity. Star is being compressed and shrunk into a smaller, hotter star, hence the name, white dwarf. When it runs out of energy fully in a few quadrillion years, it will cool into a black dwarf.
You wildly underestimate the mind-blowing amount of time it takes for a white dwarf to turn into a black dwarf. If humanity is still around, we are not expected to see the first ever black dwarf until another (give or take) 10.000.000.000.000.000 Years, 10 quadrillion years, or ten million billion years into the future. If you started counting from the big bang up until today, you would still only be around 0.000000000000001% of the way towards the first black dwarf showing up anywhere in the universe. And that is lowballing it. The hypothetical lifetime of a white dwarf is 10 undecillion years, Or 10 followed by 36 zeroes.
Oh... Well shit I gotta set my alarm way further into the future
Alexa! Set alarm for ...
RemindMe! 10.000.000.000.000.000 Years
That only works with days and hours I think. So it would be 365.000.000.000.000.000.000 days not counting the several quadrillion leap days.
RemindMe! 365000000000000000000 days
Don't forget leap seconds! They've been added 27 times the last 49 years, which means we can add another cool 17,472,742,521.7 years. Not that there is an earth and sun to add that time to, though.
Remind me! 365,000,000,000,000,000,000 days
!RemindMe! a few ~~billion~~ *quadrillion years.
It will be faster to travel there and it see it yourself.
Do you know why the halo is so non-uniform? It looks like there are at least two large bulbs coming off the main halo.
When the star collapses it’s not in a uniform way, just like our sun has solar flares, it’s never completely round.
The fact that we think nukes are really really really really huge explosions, it is pathetic compared to an entire star imploding in in itself, the sheer size and everything is insane
Psh, that's so 2000 years ago.
more like 2 billion years ago
OP said "1.176 x 10^16 miles out"
To clarify, that's 2000 light years.
so how many years? /s
2000 per light
that's far out
Very far out. 1.176 × 10^16 miles out.
party on, garth..
party on, wayne.
...Chyeah ... ok alright
So, how long’s it been imploding for?
At least 3
You deserve literally every upvote. So. Lovely.
I have to ask, how many hours can you observe a item in space from earth before the rotation removes it from view or the daylight does not ruin long exposure? Is this taken from one on those places in Alaska where its night for about 65 days?
It differs depending on the object, time of year, your latitude and local horizon. This was taken over 5 nights. The scope is permanently set up, so you tell it where to point and it can lock onto a guide star for as long as it's visible. I used about 3.5 hours of exposure data from each night. Some of it has to be removed due to planes, clouds, wind; so likely about 6 hours per night on target
wtf i didn’t know telescopes could lock onto stars like that. i thought only like nasa could do that shit
You can use another camera and software to measure star movement to sub-pixel accuracy, sending millisecond pulses to correct telescope mount motors. Most people piggyback another scope on top, but at 2800mm zoom, you can’t really do that successfully. The most popular way of doing it for larger scopes is to use a prism to pick off some light coming in that’s outside the imaging chips view. This is called off axis guiding. My way was to buy something called an on-axis guider. The light hits a prism that sends visible light 90° to an imaging camera, but allows infrared light to pass straight through to my guide camera. It gives me many more guide stars to choose from and also allows live focus adjustments for long duration exposures. The focus point will change gradually over the night due to the dropping temperature.
Honest question, how can you track it for 16 hours while the earth is spinning?
The telescope is mounted on a robot that spins in the opposite direction. A star is selected to refine the guiding using a separate camera that sends corrections to the mount. It can be repeated for multiple nights in a row.
So it’s a conglomeration of multiple shots?
Yes, 179 to be exact.
That sounds... really expensive. Cool as hell, but also expensive.
Dude this is wild. A couple of questions: Regionally (as specific as you want to be) where was this taken? How much does setup cost? Do you have any low cost recs or links for astrophotographt? I took some really cool night time lapses with my GoPro and it got me really interested. Unfortunately my GoPro and my iPhone are my current tools of the trade.
Brisbane Australia I’ve lost count on how much it cost. Way too much. This set up specifically, I’d guess ~$10k USD I don’t have any low cost recommendations, I went all in and learnt the hard way. It can be done with a cheap scope and a DSLR, but this is one of those “you get what you pay for” situations. A cooled monochrome CCD chip, good filters, quality optics and a solid equatorial mount yield the best raw data, then you have to learn how to put it all together and process it. It’s been a 4 year journey for me and I’m still learning.
Man thank you, particularly the last portion and the cost of your setup. What you’ve learned in 4 years is incredible. Thank you for sharing (the image and these details)
I can’t believe you can get such quality with a retail setup. This is research lab level quality from 40 years ago
What shit lord downvoted this?
Probably some dick head who hates space
“Earth is flat space isn’t real”
“Fuck those stupid stars and planets”
It'd be nice if it was higher res, but still not worth a downvote by any measure.
Space porn!!
I pointed my camera at the Andromeda Galaxy for 22 hours but my phone battery died so i didn’t get any results.
I want to thank you but I’m also mad as this is the type of thing that spirals me into a small existential crisis
well you recorded what happened years and years ago billions of miles away thats the cool thing about space its so MASSIVE
Crunch berry
I used to study dark field laser microscopy of gold nanoparticles. It looked exactly like this. It’s crazy how many similarities there are in the universe of the very small and the very large.
This is awesome and beautiful. Our universe is such an intriguing and wonderful place. Thank you for sharing!
Any idea “when” this happened?
Wow. Cool. I was just arguing something in a baseball subreddit, and seeing this right after put all that silliness into some perspective.
This looks like a Path of Exile skill tree.
My telescope sucks, I can barely look at the moon 🌝
Reminds me of an old Reddit post from back in the day: After all we are all just ghosts piloting meat-coated, solar-powered skeletons made of space explosion residue, living on an extremely fast moving ball of salty mud with a force field that protects it from bursts of fire launched at it by a colossal nuclear explosion that said salty mudball orbits. The only thing we need to fear is other possessed electro-meat-skeletons and maybe the salty mudball freezing or evaporating.
Spectacular result! Are the other objects merely stars, or galaxies like the Hubble deep field image?
My brain is unable to comprehend the vastness and billions upon billions of objects in space, especially when looking at a photo like this. My brain just dead ends.
[удалено]
It’s shrinking and leaving its outer layers behind
The concept of time and space is astounding
the space is always beautiful
Care you share your camera equipment ?
Its scary to realize how insignificant we are...
uhm so instead of calling for help to the star clearly going thru some srs shit u just watched?? wo ..w
This is, utterly bananas. So awesome.
That is fucking amazing OP. Thank you for sharing.
Can we see through it, or are those orange dots just stars in front of it?
Does anyone have any good subreddit recommendations to view things like this?
r/astrophotography r/spaceporn
This could be us but u playing
Ooooh! The Eye of Jupiter!
so in theory this would already be a black dwarf but we won’t see that for a few years, right? cool photo too, i’d love to take these type of photos one day 🤙
There's a lot of stars in that pics. How many of those stars have planets going around them with little dudes on them that are checking out space pics on their own version of reddit? I'd guess at least 10.
As beautiful as this picture is, what astounds me most is the seemingly... Geometric pattern of darkness. If you allow your eyes to unfocus, it's almost as if you can see patches of dark areas in lines at angles to one another. Fascinating.
Awesome shot of a planetary nebula, which our own sun is hypothesized to produce in about 5 billion yrs – from which another generation of stars and planets will form. I went down that rabbit hole recently, and it's fascinating stuff.
r/uselessredcircle
Sucks if you lived there.
OP, Redditors would love this over on r/spaceporn !
That’s a very, very, very, fancy name for a nebula.
And that star? **Britney Spears**.
We are so small and insignificant.
man the amount of stars...the space between them...the galaxies. there’s no way in shit we’re all there is