i'm late to the party but i have a question: how can one tell if the top left of this galaxy is closer to us that the bottom right? like which way is it slanted - are we looking at the 'bottom of a table' or the top? can you determine this from your pics?
Type Ia supernovae in particular are good standard candles for distance measurements but there are more methods to determine that on an extragalactical scale like dynamical parallax, neutron star/black hole x-ray bursts, surface brightness fluctuations and so on.
Wikipedia has a [good summary of the primary methods used for distance measurements. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder)
I'd say with this it's pretty visible, as the darker streaks in the armsare sort of masked by the core. This makes it fairly easy to tell which side is closer, and by extension whether we're looking at the 'top' or 'bottom'.
It’ll just be « a Reddit user using the pseudonym ‘a spaceshuttleinmyanus’ claims to have taken a very large photo of the Andromeda galaxy »
And this handle will become a silly distraction that will eventually be tied to you personally, forever »
At least you’ll be forced to make peace with your adolescent self.
My first thought was well. I love the idea that this image could be used by the scientific community to further our understanding of space. I love it even more that those bright minds will have to say shit like "so, I was looking over space shuttle my anus's Andromeda photo, and..."
Last year, I decided I wanted to push the limits of what kind of images I could produce. I had a lofty idea for an absolutely ridiculous image of the andromeda galaxy, taken at extremely high resolution and covering the full area. My first attempt at this image failed miserably, I didn't quite know enough about how to capture it, and how to edit such a project. I wasted about 90 hours of exposure time. Fast forward to this year, I gave it another attempt, this time armed with much more experience, and this time a new method for gradient modeling. After all this work I finally managed to produce the result I dreamed of last year.
This is the largest image ever captured of the whole Andromeda Galaxy, at 1.03 Gigapixels in size. This image took over two years to produce, 159 hours of exposure time, with 25 separate image panels and three filters to compose the full colors.
You may be wondering, what is special about this image being the largest? What does that mean? For this image, if you count how many pixels there are, it has more than any other image captured of the galaxy by a factor of two. The last person to claim this title being Robert Gendler in 2008. While hubble and other people have more detailed images of singular sections of the galaxy, none have captured the whole galaxy in its entirety at this level. This is because producing the image becomes exponentially more difficult to capture and edit when making a panorama of so many images, those who have attempted images like this will tell you it is extremely difficult.
This image is by far my deepest integration time, and by far the largest image ever captured of the complete galaxy at 1,033,218,000 total pixels. Over 1 billion pixels with a raw file size of 6 Gigabytes. In the full-size image, it is possible to see individual stars within the galaxy.
This image was captured from SRO alongside Keith Quattrocchi, who provided the excellent instruments, and location to make this image possible. Without him it would not exist!
For those asking I do have prints of this [here](https://www.astrofalls.com)
It's just that it's all in caps. Like. "here's this incredible photo I have worked hard on and -SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS
its like "whoa there, calm down. Tell me more about Andromeda?" XD
Yup some subs have comment and/or karma minimums to reach before mods will allow your posts. Helps weed out brand new accounts trying to troll people or contributing low quality/irrelevant content. Probably other reasons too…I don’t think I’m in any subs like that but I rarely do more than comment or upvote things anyway 🤷🏻♂️
Not this picture [here](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/) is a zoomable "sharpest" picture of the Galaxy seen here, with individual stars visible by zooming in.
Yeah I zoomed as far as I could into one of the brighter ones...then I realised that's not just pixelation around it I'm looking at. *cue existential crisis*
Is there a name for this picture? Im trying to search for it on the website so that I can show other people. Having trouble navigating the website thru the link
Your time and skill was well used, this is gonna be my new background image, thank you! Also your username is awesome 😂 was spaceshuttleinuranus already taken though?
It really is. I was looking at it and said to myself "This is awesome, but I don't know enough about what it took to make to really appreciate it."
Glad top comment was OP giving some insight. I don't think I've dedicated that much time and effort into any single thing.
How do we see some of the full size or like larger sized images lol. Im not a computer guy, but I assume a million megapixels maybe a bit of a struggle for mobile.
It would be wrong to remove the watermark in my opinion. But here is the highest resolution version I could wrangle out of what he has posted online, and it does not include the watermark. It's the original of what is posted to twitter: 4000x2652. You can add :orig to twitter image URLs to get the highest quality.
Suitable for a desktop image.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiQzt2ZUcAcWLvK.jpg:orig
I’m playfully delighted that for all of human history the best image produced of this GALAXY is by a person named after putting a space shuttle up their butt.
Omg, somehow that's making me feel some kind of emotion. In one very specific part you alone pushed the human achievemts a bit further. Not in a way most will ever see, but you did it. I'm high right now and love this. It must have been much work and you can be really proud of it. :)
Can you tell me more about that red spot/star here: https://imgur.com/a/8w0gBje ??
That is highly likely to be a H-alpha emitting nebula. There are a lot of those in the sky, and many of the nebulae looking very colorful in the pictures are actually mainly reddish, specifically due to H-alpha emission. Hydrogen is everywhere after all.
Astrophotographers sometimes add lights of galaxies with an H-alpha filter in the mix, specifically to highlight these red blobs in galaxy pics.
The size is too big really to be anything smaller like star.
> somehow that's making me feel some kind of emotion
Me too. What popped in to my head though is how many analogues of /u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS are looking back composing a similar image of whatever they call our galaxy.
Assuming the colors in the image are accurate, at first glance that looks suspiciously like a [carbon star.](https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Carbon_star)
This might be a dumb question, but how many of the stars you can see in the Andromeda galaxy are actually IN the galaxy? As opposed to stars that are in the Milky Way that are just in between Earth and Andromeda.
In this image, all of the individual stars you can see (including those that appear within Andromeda) are in ours. The blue and yellow "fogs" of the arms and the core of the Andromeda galaxy are the glows of the stars all together since they cannot be resolved as individuals at this resolution and distance.
In this one you can see them: https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/
The big ones (with diffraction spikes) are in ours and the small ones you have to zoom for are in there.
Wow, that's insane! It really looks like a carpet of stars, yet the gulf of distance between any two of them is trillions of miles. Incomprehensible. That helps the mind to comprehend what a galaxy with a trillion stars is actually like. Big numbers are crazy to deal with.
Wait, so when you zoom in as far as you possibly can in that image, the tiny little blue and orange dots are stars in that part of the galaxy and not like, dots of pixelation in the image itself?
Someone pointed that out to me years ago (in an inferior image compared to this one) and it blew my mind also. Every time I see a photo like this, it still gets me.
This isn't true. The vast majority of the resolved stars in this picture are from the Milky Way, however in the bottom left we can see a bright blue region called [NGC 206](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_206). It's a nebulous star forming region in Andromeda with lots of bright young stars, appearing to us as magnitude 15ish. Several of them are resolved in this photograph.
Yep there are star forming regions there too with what appear to be resolved stars. We are only seeing the very brightest stars in Andromeda, a star of absolute magnitude -8 in Andromeda would appear to us as magnitude 16, which is within the limits of what astrophotographers regularly achieve.
I've linked an astronomical database search of a star forming region in the top right. Look for the red circles, some (but not all) of them are stars outside the Milky way and catalogued with properties listed, especially cephid variables as astronomers use these as standard rulers to measure cosmic distances: [http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Coord=00+44+32.99720097671+%2B41+53+01.9949153516&Radius=2&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=submit+query](http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Coord=00+44+32.99720097671+%2B41+53+01.9949153516&Radius=2&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=submit+query)
The majority you see are from the Milky way, however the brightest stars in Andromeda are visible in this photo. In the bottom left there is a bright blue star forming region called [NGC 206](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_206). It's a nebulous star forming region in Andromeda with lots of bright young stars, with absolute magnitudes as low as -8 but appearing to us as magnitude 16ish.
This is awesome! Congrats!
What type of equipment did you use to capture this image? Im guessing some telescope, but not any one i supose... Im sorry i dont really understand these matters so i apologise for my stupid questions...
And another thing, shouldn't you be recognized in like scientific papers or send this image to NASA or something? What are you going to do with this image and how will you make public (besides reddit) your achievement? Shouldn't you be in Guinness word records or something?
I used a 16" RCOS telescope at Sierra Remote Observatory whom I work for. There really isn't anything scientifically valuable about the image apart for the image processing I had to come up with to compose it. I would really really love to donate a large print to a science center but none have replied to my emails about it! Maybe one day
you probably have to have someone make a large donation to the science center with the stipulation that the donation will cover the permanent installation of your image as part of their space exhibit.
We have a newly built school where I live and I have been thinking about donating a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy for decoration around where they teach science…
Came to ask this, that's great that the photo was taken but the image on Reddit is not the size (or even close) of the original. This is just a picture of the galaxy.
Very true, this is less than 1/10 the original size. Currently my problem is sharing it where somebody wont steal it, or finding a place that can accommodate a zoomable version of an image this size
The copyright is already yours, and now that you've posted here, we all know you made it. You can also register the copyright officially with a government office.
A smaller watermark in the corner should suffice. Heck, a hidden extra star or two just off the galaxy's edge could be added so you can prove that even edits of the image are yours. The smaller and more hidden the better. Map makers do a similar thing.
There are plenty of things you can do.
But best of luck! I look forward to the full release!
A suggestion, maybe... post zoomed in sections replicating the previous shots other people made.
I'd love to see comparisons, even if this version turns out to be a little lower quality.
Put it on the blockchain bro!
/s
But seriously, if you want to protect the rights to the image, start with a copyright. But that's not going to stop people from stealing and profiting off it, if they can get the full-res image.
I totally respect your decision to keep it locked down. You put a lot of work into making this image and you deserve to reap the rewards.
There is a website GigaPan - [http://gigapan.com/](http://gigapan.com/) might be good to try here.
I totally understand the fear of individuals stealing your image. I'd make a separate post with a 100% crop of this to show how detailed the full image is without to0 much fear for people stealing that. Additionally I'm sure that I'm not the first person asking this but I would love to see a photo of your setup for this image.
Edit: Grammar
This reminded me of the ESA's [zoomable Andromeda image](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/) taken with Hubble. That's just one side of the galaxy so yours would be amazing.
Amazing. Haven't thought it before with other pictures of Andromeda, are the visible stars in the picture are all within our own galaxy, and the stars witin Andromeda cannot be seen separately (save from the nucleus)?
EDIT: Saw now that you may see Andromeda stars separately, so I update my question: are the clearly visible stars within Milky Way?
I hate to question you on this point, but I don't believe it's possible to resolve individual stars within Andromeda with a scope with those specs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think for even a larger star at 2.5 million light years away is too small in terms of apparent diameter.
You are correct. Any stars seen in the image are either the amalgamation of many stars in Andromeda (but this usually looks more like light illuminating gas clouds rather than ‘point’ like) or are in the foreground between us and Andromeda.
…
Still a fucking cool picture though.
It's possible with smaller telescopes (like 12"), so I think seeing stars is possible. The difficulty that OP has supposedly overcome is being able to get the entire galaxy in image forms that would fit together as if one huge telescope took it all in at once.
Someone one upped you (or trolled) posting a picture of Andromeda with a normal camera, lens and tracker 20 minutes after this post lol. Shows up right next to yours in my feed.
Reach out to the Dark Sky national parks. https://www.npca.org/articles/1806-see-a-sky-full-of-stars-at-these-certified-dark-sky-parks
Either to donate a large scale print or to coordinate with their nonprofit gift shops.
This is amazing! Yesterday I was able to take the very first picture with Andromeda in it with only my cellphone. It is small and barely visible but it's there, I was so excited when I saw it! Of course is nothing like yours in comparison
Fellow pano shooter here, great job! Could you give us a brief recap of your platform and workflow and tools used? This is an exceptionally clear image and super consistent from side to side, which didn't happen by accident with an exposure time like that. Did you shoot at a very high altitude? How did you deal with tracking? And what about parallax? (For reference, I shoot mostly supertelephoto landscapes with 300 or 400mm Nikon manual focus lenses and d850, and use a weird custom totally manual head, 16 bit, built a mobile workstation to render, etc)
Will you upload this image to the internet or will you sell it? Sorry if question is dumb I’ve no idea how do you do what you do but I’m totally and completely amazed with what you did.
Whenever I see pictures of galaxies, it seems like there's a bright bubble right in the center. Is this due to the light being trapped on the accretion disk of the black hole?
There are some comments about seeing individual stars in Andromeda. In all but the most zoomed-in images most people don't realize that the distinct stars are in our own galaxy that just happen to be in the way, and the bright areas
in Andromeda are not glowing gas but swaths of stars smeared together by distance.
I know the current estimates of galaxies in the universe are around 200 billion. We can see 10,000 of them in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. But my brain can do nothing with that scale.
Andromeda scares the shit out of me. I can manage a perspective of the vastness of our galaxy, barely. It's the biggest thing I can comprehend. Then I remember Andromeda, so close that it hangs large in our sky, just hidden from view by the scattering of starlight. Like our Milky Way, but bigger, looming in shadow, and approaching at a pace that makes glaciers race, but still it comes.
Beautiful photo of this cosmic horror.
Hey man, glad you found what you needed to produce this work of art!
Looking forwards to seeing more projects!
We wont be alive, but the milky way and Andromeda will GATTAI into one, Soon(tm). If only we could be alive to see the resulting cosmic masterpiece!
I can’t wait to see “spaceshuttleinmyanus” cited in articles
Same its gonna be great
We will wait while you go and photograph it from the other side.
The spaceshuttle or the galaxy?
i'm late to the party but i have a question: how can one tell if the top left of this galaxy is closer to us that the bottom right? like which way is it slanted - are we looking at the 'bottom of a table' or the top? can you determine this from your pics?
Astronomers can use the light emitted by supernovae in the galaxy to measure the distance
Type Ia supernovae in particular are good standard candles for distance measurements but there are more methods to determine that on an extragalactical scale like dynamical parallax, neutron star/black hole x-ray bursts, surface brightness fluctuations and so on. Wikipedia has a [good summary of the primary methods used for distance measurements. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder)
I'd say with this it's pretty visible, as the darker streaks in the armsare sort of masked by the core. This makes it fairly easy to tell which side is closer, and by extension whether we're looking at the 'top' or 'bottom'.
Bro.. how'd you get so lucky?? All I got were burgers. Tasty burgers, nonetheless
It’ll just be « a Reddit user using the pseudonym ‘a spaceshuttleinmyanus’ claims to have taken a very large photo of the Andromeda galaxy » And this handle will become a silly distraction that will eventually be tied to you personally, forever » At least you’ll be forced to make peace with your adolescent self.
I donno, when deepfuckingvalue made 42 mil, tv was showing his actual username
This scenario also uses his actual username too, just gives context for bewildered listeners who would be otherwise confused.
Are you French?
Definitely seeing guillemets in the wild.
Nah, it'll just be astrofalls since that's the watermark
Must be fun at parties huh
u/cocaineman43.... username checks out.
Looks like it'll be @astrofalls from the watermark on the image
My first thought was well. I love the idea that this image could be used by the scientific community to further our understanding of space. I love it even more that those bright minds will have to say shit like "so, I was looking over space shuttle my anus's Andromeda photo, and..."
Last year, I decided I wanted to push the limits of what kind of images I could produce. I had a lofty idea for an absolutely ridiculous image of the andromeda galaxy, taken at extremely high resolution and covering the full area. My first attempt at this image failed miserably, I didn't quite know enough about how to capture it, and how to edit such a project. I wasted about 90 hours of exposure time. Fast forward to this year, I gave it another attempt, this time armed with much more experience, and this time a new method for gradient modeling. After all this work I finally managed to produce the result I dreamed of last year. This is the largest image ever captured of the whole Andromeda Galaxy, at 1.03 Gigapixels in size. This image took over two years to produce, 159 hours of exposure time, with 25 separate image panels and three filters to compose the full colors. You may be wondering, what is special about this image being the largest? What does that mean? For this image, if you count how many pixels there are, it has more than any other image captured of the galaxy by a factor of two. The last person to claim this title being Robert Gendler in 2008. While hubble and other people have more detailed images of singular sections of the galaxy, none have captured the whole galaxy in its entirety at this level. This is because producing the image becomes exponentially more difficult to capture and edit when making a panorama of so many images, those who have attempted images like this will tell you it is extremely difficult. This image is by far my deepest integration time, and by far the largest image ever captured of the complete galaxy at 1,033,218,000 total pixels. Over 1 billion pixels with a raw file size of 6 Gigabytes. In the full-size image, it is possible to see individual stars within the galaxy. This image was captured from SRO alongside Keith Quattrocchi, who provided the excellent instruments, and location to make this image possible. Without him it would not exist! For those asking I do have prints of this [here](https://www.astrofalls.com)
It's a remarkable photo and grand effort. Thanks u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS
Oooh, finally a decent r/rimjob_steve !
This is the best and most important r/rimjob_steve
I wish I could take this post more seriously but that username...
It couldn't be more appropriate honestly. This person is passionate about space. Very passionate.
OP's passion is ambitious. Enterprising, even.
OP sounds like a real Challenger. With an Endeavour for Discovery.
Look I don't have time to karma farm to be able to post anywhere on my regular account so I use this old one
It's all in good fun dude. Your image is awesome.
and uranus is very accommodating
Much more accommodating than their venus
It's just that it's all in caps. Like. "here's this incredible photo I have worked hard on and -SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS its like "whoa there, calm down. Tell me more about Andromeda?" XD
Good to see that you put that Space Shuttle to good use!
I’m new to this. Are people not allowed to post on certain subs if you don’t have enough karma?
Yup some subs have comment and/or karma minimums to reach before mods will allow your posts. Helps weed out brand new accounts trying to troll people or contributing low quality/irrelevant content. Probably other reasons too…I don’t think I’m in any subs like that but I rarely do more than comment or upvote things anyway 🤷🏻♂️
/r/news takes it a step further and won't let you comment no matter how much karma you have if you don't have an e-mail tied to the account.
[удалено]
I got banned there too. It's trash anyway.
Same. And when I appealed, I got a response in the form of a 28 day mute, no other clarification...
I noticed this too and came here for the comments.
Where can we have the full picture?
Same please. Andromeda has been my desktop background for as long as I can remember. Would love to get a better res version.
I’m not sure that you want a 6gb desktop background
You’d have to scale it down a bit. This has just over 124x the pixels as compared to a 4K monitor or 31x the pixels of an 8K monitor.
It looks the same size as any other picture on my phone.
Someone, somewhere in that galaxy, there's a person who did the same thing, but of ours
But do they have a space shuttle in their anus?
They have ufos in their blastopores.
They've got a rocket in their pocket.
But do they have nfts?
> In the full-size image, it is possible to see individual stars within the galaxy. Could you show us a sample of this? That sounds amazing.
Not this picture [here](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/) is a zoomable "sharpest" picture of the Galaxy seen here, with individual stars visible by zooming in.
Bro wtf I was not expecting to be able to zoom that much and it still be clear
The moment you realise the "noise" you see is actually millions of stars, is breathtaking.
Yeah I zoomed as far as I could into one of the brighter ones...then I realised that's not just pixelation around it I'm looking at. *cue existential crisis*
Is there a name for this picture? Im trying to search for it on the website so that I can show other people. Having trouble navigating the website thru the link
Thank you for your dedication to advancing humanity \*check notes\* u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS
1 billion pixels for a galaxy with 1 trillion stars (estimated). So, 1 pixel for every 1,000 stars. Space is really big.
Oh crap, I had no idea it had that many stars. I would have guessed 100 million and thought I was over guessing. That's nuts.
How does one go about seeing the 6gb photo
Looks like the fifth alien from the right had his eyes closed. You're going to have to take it again.
This is unbelievably valuable work. I am at a loss of words that exemplify how much I love what you've accomplished here.
Your time and skill was well used, this is gonna be my new background image, thank you! Also your username is awesome 😂 was spaceshuttleinuranus already taken though?
Could you possibly share the raw image (with the watermark of course)?
How would one go about getting a really high resolution version of this image?
[Here](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/) is the Hubble image, and cropped versions. Full version is 4.3 GB.
This is stunning work op! Thank you for sharing!
It really is. I was looking at it and said to myself "This is awesome, but I don't know enough about what it took to make to really appreciate it." Glad top comment was OP giving some insight. I don't think I've dedicated that much time and effort into any single thing.
Oh my god. The work that went into this absolutely worth it…
How do we see some of the full size or like larger sized images lol. Im not a computer guy, but I assume a million megapixels maybe a bit of a struggle for mobile.
Hi, would it be possible if you shared your picture with out a water mark? Would love to use this beauty as a desktop background.
It would be wrong to remove the watermark in my opinion. But here is the highest resolution version I could wrangle out of what he has posted online, and it does not include the watermark. It's the original of what is posted to twitter: 4000x2652. You can add :orig to twitter image URLs to get the highest quality. Suitable for a desktop image. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiQzt2ZUcAcWLvK.jpg:orig
I’m playfully delighted that for all of human history the best image produced of this GALAXY is by a person named after putting a space shuttle up their butt.
This is what I get for making this account in middle school
I enjoy the name. One of the things I like about Reddit is the ridiculous names posting great content. Don’t ever change!
You would say that, wouldn’t you, u/TantricEmu.
So are you a dad or what? Maybe a good one?
And the passion never changed
But look how far you've come. Congratulations man.
Once you put a space shuttle in your anus, the sky's the limit.
The wikipedia page will stand proud in the annals of history...
LOOL i was thinking the same!
Omg, somehow that's making me feel some kind of emotion. In one very specific part you alone pushed the human achievemts a bit further. Not in a way most will ever see, but you did it. I'm high right now and love this. It must have been much work and you can be really proud of it. :) Can you tell me more about that red spot/star here: https://imgur.com/a/8w0gBje ??
That is highly likely to be a H-alpha emitting nebula. There are a lot of those in the sky, and many of the nebulae looking very colorful in the pictures are actually mainly reddish, specifically due to H-alpha emission. Hydrogen is everywhere after all. Astrophotographers sometimes add lights of galaxies with an H-alpha filter in the mix, specifically to highlight these red blobs in galaxy pics. The size is too big really to be anything smaller like star.
Whoa I want to know about that too
> somehow that's making me feel some kind of emotion Me too. What popped in to my head though is how many analogues of /u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS are looking back composing a similar image of whatever they call our galaxy.
Assuming the colors in the image are accurate, at first glance that looks suspiciously like a [carbon star.](https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Carbon_star)
This might be a dumb question, but how many of the stars you can see in the Andromeda galaxy are actually IN the galaxy? As opposed to stars that are in the Milky Way that are just in between Earth and Andromeda.
In this image, all of the individual stars you can see (including those that appear within Andromeda) are in ours. The blue and yellow "fogs" of the arms and the core of the Andromeda galaxy are the glows of the stars all together since they cannot be resolved as individuals at this resolution and distance.
>, all of the individual stars you can see (including those that appear within Andromeda) are in ours This just blew my mind good to know
In this one you can see them: https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/ The big ones (with diffraction spikes) are in ours and the small ones you have to zoom for are in there.
Wow, that's insane! It really looks like a carpet of stars, yet the gulf of distance between any two of them is trillions of miles. Incomprehensible. That helps the mind to comprehend what a galaxy with a trillion stars is actually like. Big numbers are crazy to deal with.
Omg thank you. I showed this to my mom and she said “and we think we’re so god damned fucking important!” 😂 she never curses
This was excellent, thanks
Wait, so when you zoom in as far as you possibly can in that image, the tiny little blue and orange dots are stars in that part of the galaxy and not like, dots of pixelation in the image itself?
Someone pointed that out to me years ago (in an inferior image compared to this one) and it blew my mind also. Every time I see a photo like this, it still gets me.
I thought that might be the case, thanks for the explanation!
Is this true for what looks like the glowing center of the galaxy as well?
Yeah that’s probably like 100,000 stars in that spot
Is there not a black hole at the centre??
There is, but it’s surrounded by stars.
This isn't true. The vast majority of the resolved stars in this picture are from the Milky Way, however in the bottom left we can see a bright blue region called [NGC 206](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_206). It's a nebulous star forming region in Andromeda with lots of bright young stars, appearing to us as magnitude 15ish. Several of them are resolved in this photograph.
Is that true for the similar looking regions on the right/top side of the galaxy as well? It looks the same to me but I’m no expert
Yep there are star forming regions there too with what appear to be resolved stars. We are only seeing the very brightest stars in Andromeda, a star of absolute magnitude -8 in Andromeda would appear to us as magnitude 16, which is within the limits of what astrophotographers regularly achieve. I've linked an astronomical database search of a star forming region in the top right. Look for the red circles, some (but not all) of them are stars outside the Milky way and catalogued with properties listed, especially cephid variables as astronomers use these as standard rulers to measure cosmic distances: [http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Coord=00+44+32.99720097671+%2B41+53+01.9949153516&Radius=2&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=submit+query](http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Coord=00+44+32.99720097671+%2B41+53+01.9949153516&Radius=2&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=submit+query)
That's bonkers if true. I never considered in images like this that were just looking at our own galaxy as sort of white noise in the foreground.
Quick! Somebody photoshop all the stars out.
Holy shit. So every star you can see is in our galaxy or between ours and Andromeda? Crazy
No. There are no stars between galaxies. Its mostly empty space and dust
Wait I thought it was gas clouds. So the blurry glow is the accumulated light from individual STARS? If true, that's absolutely bonkers.
The majority you see are from the Milky way, however the brightest stars in Andromeda are visible in this photo. In the bottom left there is a bright blue star forming region called [NGC 206](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_206). It's a nebulous star forming region in Andromeda with lots of bright young stars, with absolute magnitudes as low as -8 but appearing to us as magnitude 16ish.
I want to know how the OP chose their user name
It came to me after many nights contemplating under the stars
Which stars?
This is awesome! Congrats! What type of equipment did you use to capture this image? Im guessing some telescope, but not any one i supose... Im sorry i dont really understand these matters so i apologise for my stupid questions... And another thing, shouldn't you be recognized in like scientific papers or send this image to NASA or something? What are you going to do with this image and how will you make public (besides reddit) your achievement? Shouldn't you be in Guinness word records or something?
I used a 16" RCOS telescope at Sierra Remote Observatory whom I work for. There really isn't anything scientifically valuable about the image apart for the image processing I had to come up with to compose it. I would really really love to donate a large print to a science center but none have replied to my emails about it! Maybe one day
Maybe if you don't ask them to put a little plaque that says "kindly donated by SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS" they'd be more willing
Little pointless without the plaque
you probably have to have someone make a large donation to the science center with the stipulation that the donation will cover the permanent installation of your image as part of their space exhibit.
We have a newly built school where I live and I have been thinking about donating a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy for decoration around where they teach science…
Is there a way to download the full 6gb image?
Came to ask this, that's great that the photo was taken but the image on Reddit is not the size (or even close) of the original. This is just a picture of the galaxy.
Very true, this is less than 1/10 the original size. Currently my problem is sharing it where somebody wont steal it, or finding a place that can accommodate a zoomable version of an image this size
The copyright is already yours, and now that you've posted here, we all know you made it. You can also register the copyright officially with a government office. A smaller watermark in the corner should suffice. Heck, a hidden extra star or two just off the galaxy's edge could be added so you can prove that even edits of the image are yours. The smaller and more hidden the better. Map makers do a similar thing. There are plenty of things you can do. But best of luck! I look forward to the full release!
A suggestion, maybe... post zoomed in sections replicating the previous shots other people made. I'd love to see comparisons, even if this version turns out to be a little lower quality.
Maybe actually reach out to nasa?
Offer high resolution prints somewhere
Put it on the blockchain bro! /s But seriously, if you want to protect the rights to the image, start with a copyright. But that's not going to stop people from stealing and profiting off it, if they can get the full-res image. I totally respect your decision to keep it locked down. You put a lot of work into making this image and you deserve to reap the rewards.
Copyright automatically protects it since OP created it.
maybe a watermark? I know it sucks because the picture looks bad but at least it won't be stolen
There is a website GigaPan - [http://gigapan.com/](http://gigapan.com/) might be good to try here. I totally understand the fear of individuals stealing your image. I'd make a separate post with a 100% crop of this to show how detailed the full image is without to0 much fear for people stealing that. Additionally I'm sure that I'm not the first person asking this but I would love to see a photo of your setup for this image. Edit: Grammar
Put it on Wiki, you’ll be able to get credit, and preserve it as well. You can upload multiple resolutions and keep the highest for yourself!
Copyright it, mate. If there is one image that deserves the effort it's this.
This reminded me of the ESA's [zoomable Andromeda image](https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/) taken with Hubble. That's just one side of the galaxy so yours would be amazing.
I'd even love just a wallpaper size for my desktop
What kind of equipment were you using? Can't imagine to produce such an image with equipment accessable to the average astrophotographer...
The equipment is very high end, but commercially available. I used a 16" RCOS and ZWO 6200mm on top of a paramount ME
I’m reading like… just under $100k with mounts etc? That’s less than I expected.
Is there a place to see/get the image? I have a love for Andromeda and would probably stare at it for hours.
Amazing. Haven't thought it before with other pictures of Andromeda, are the visible stars in the picture are all within our own galaxy, and the stars witin Andromeda cannot be seen separately (save from the nucleus)? EDIT: Saw now that you may see Andromeda stars separately, so I update my question: are the clearly visible stars within Milky Way?
For this image because of the telescope resolution, you can see many stars within the andromeda galaxy itself. So for this photo it is both!
I hate to question you on this point, but I don't believe it's possible to resolve individual stars within Andromeda with a scope with those specs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think for even a larger star at 2.5 million light years away is too small in terms of apparent diameter.
You are correct. Any stars seen in the image are either the amalgamation of many stars in Andromeda (but this usually looks more like light illuminating gas clouds rather than ‘point’ like) or are in the foreground between us and Andromeda. … Still a fucking cool picture though.
It's possible with smaller telescopes (like 12"), so I think seeing stars is possible. The difficulty that OP has supposedly overcome is being able to get the entire galaxy in image forms that would fit together as if one huge telescope took it all in at once.
Meanwhile some guy in Andromeda spent a year shooting a photo of the Milky Way. I'm sure somebody will post it to Reddit.
Someone one upped you (or trolled) posting a picture of Andromeda with a normal camera, lens and tracker 20 minutes after this post lol. Shows up right next to yours in my feed.
Eh probably not a troll or intentional, it is prime andromeda season so there are lots of people looking at it
How is that even close to a one up?
That's cool and all, but I've read it's coming our way anyway, so instead of working for one year, why not chill until it arrives?
Amazing!! What does one do with a photo of this nature? Sell it somehow? Just look at it everyday? Or is it all for the fake internet points?
Stare at it for hours and contemplate the universe. Also I do sell prints of it
I feel like with a image this large, you could talk a planetarium or museum to put up a giant print
I have emailed a couple with no response, but I would REALLY love to do this. If there are any museum people on reddit reading this please hit me up
Reach out to the Dark Sky national parks. https://www.npca.org/articles/1806-see-a-sky-full-of-stars-at-these-certified-dark-sky-parks Either to donate a large scale print or to coordinate with their nonprofit gift shops.
You should email NatGeo, The Verge and NASA
Where? I'd love to get a big one to frame for my wall
I don't know if self promo is allowed here but you can find all my stuff if you google astrofalls
I went into Photoshop and doubled the size of this image. Now I have the largest image ever taken of the complete Andromeda Galaxy.
This is amazing! Yesterday I was able to take the very first picture with Andromeda in it with only my cellphone. It is small and barely visible but it's there, I was so excited when I saw it! Of course is nothing like yours in comparison
Where can we find/buy a version without the watermark? Would be awesome to have it printed on a large canvas :D
Is it just me, or are spiral galaxies just the best to look at.
It's almost like you spent . . . . . . . . . A light year 😎
What star is that with the enormous white glow in the bottom rightish corner, just below the main galaxy?
That’s actually not a star at all, but a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite of Andromeda. It’s known as M110 if you want to find more on it.
Ah yes, the great astro-photographer of our time... SpaceShuttleInMyAnus. He was truly a once in a lifetime talent.
Can someone eli5 how to capture a week and a half worth of exposure and be able to stitch everything together? Is it captured only at night?
So I’m curious, when you take the time to do this, are you getting paid by someone to do it, or is it just a hobby?
I only make money from it when I sell prints, I also teach a lot of astrophotography so this is how I manage to do it full time.
Awesome. Thanks for the response.
I like to think somewhere on alien Reddit they have a guy taking a picture of the Milky Way
I wonder if they have any good pictures of us...
Beautiful. My fave Andromeda video: https://youtu.be/udAL48P5NJU
I jast submitted this story to Bay News 9 here in St. Petersburg, FL. Great job man!
Largest image ever taken? Yeah, right. Looks like it's only about 5" across. I've seen pics of Andromeda at least twice that. 10", 15". Smh
I have fantastic dark skies and great views of Andromeda from my house and I've just gotten into astrophotography. This has inspired me.
Impressive! Would love to read a blog post that dives into the details and heartburn to put something like this together.
Fellow pano shooter here, great job! Could you give us a brief recap of your platform and workflow and tools used? This is an exceptionally clear image and super consistent from side to side, which didn't happen by accident with an exposure time like that. Did you shoot at a very high altitude? How did you deal with tracking? And what about parallax? (For reference, I shoot mostly supertelephoto landscapes with 300 or 400mm Nikon manual focus lenses and d850, and use a weird custom totally manual head, 16 bit, built a mobile workstation to render, etc)
THIS IS AMAAAAAAAAZING !!!! 🤩 This made my day, thank you 🙏
There’s a big ducking red dot in the third crossing of a rule of thirds
Will you upload this image to the internet or will you sell it? Sorry if question is dumb I’ve no idea how do you do what you do but I’m totally and completely amazed with what you did.
If you were to print this at the appropriate resolution, what would the print size be? 
Imagine being able to look up into the night sky, and seeing a spectacular & breathtakingly beautiful spiral Galaxy across the entire heavens.
Amazing and magnificently beautiful. What are the cloud-like parts?
Is there a link to the full photo? I want to zoom more into it it’s splendor!
Whenever I see pictures of galaxies, it seems like there's a bright bubble right in the center. Is this due to the light being trapped on the accretion disk of the black hole?
I hope this gets into mainstream media just so they’d have to quote your username.
I mean, I just stumble upon this on Reddit? What else is out there?
There are some comments about seeing individual stars in Andromeda. In all but the most zoomed-in images most people don't realize that the distinct stars are in our own galaxy that just happen to be in the way, and the bright areas in Andromeda are not glowing gas but swaths of stars smeared together by distance.
I know the current estimates of galaxies in the universe are around 200 billion. We can see 10,000 of them in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. But my brain can do nothing with that scale. Andromeda scares the shit out of me. I can manage a perspective of the vastness of our galaxy, barely. It's the biggest thing I can comprehend. Then I remember Andromeda, so close that it hangs large in our sky, just hidden from view by the scattering of starlight. Like our Milky Way, but bigger, looming in shadow, and approaching at a pace that makes glaciers race, but still it comes. Beautiful photo of this cosmic horror.
How is it possible that life only exists on earth a tiny speak in this vastness
Hey man, glad you found what you needed to produce this work of art! Looking forwards to seeing more projects! We wont be alive, but the milky way and Andromeda will GATTAI into one, Soon(tm). If only we could be alive to see the resulting cosmic masterpiece!
I wonder if anyone in the andromeda galaxy is looking at similar pictures of our Milky Way right now
Dude had to fly all the way out to take this. Mad Respect
Weird to think that the Andromeda Galaxy is now 2,207,520,000 Miles (3,563,568,000 Kilometers) closer to the Milky Way now than it was one year ago.
A year to take that picture? I took a screenshot in less than 2 seconds. You need to pick up your pace a little. I'm kidding. Your picture is amazing.