andromeda

How I Took a Photo of the Andromeda Galaxy from My Backyard

I recently shot a photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy that went viral, appearing everywhere from the front page of Reddit to Newsweek. The photo was taken with a four-inch telescope over the course of multiple nights from my backyard near Charlottesville, Virginia, US.

This Tilt-Shift Photo of Andromeda Was Shot Using a DIY Adapter

The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Insight Investment 2020 Astrophotographer of the Year, Nicolas Lefaudeux, has revealed his technique and the simple DIY adapter that made his award-winning image of the Andromeda galaxy possible.

What 100 Million Stars Looks Like: NASA Releases a 1.5 Gigapixel Photo of the Andromeda Galaxy

NASA has released the largest and sharpest photograph ever made of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to ours that contains an estimated 1 trillion stars. The new image (above is a crop showing a portion of it) weighs in at 1.5 gigapixels (i.e. 1.5 billion pixels); it's so big that you would need 600HD televisions to display the entire digital photo.

This is What Photos of the Night Sky Would Look Like if the Andromeda Galaxy Were Brighter

What would the night sky look like if the closest spiral galaxy to us were as bright as the moon and visible in its entirety to the naked eye? The photo above offers a pretty accurate look (Click the image for a larger version).

Created by Tom Buckley-Houston, the composite image shows the Andromeda galaxy's actual size in the night sky with a huge boost in brightness.

Building a DIY Barn Door Tracking Mount for Long-Exposure Astrophotography

Getting quality astrophotography shots comes with several challenges, and one of the main ones is that the starts don't stand still -- or, more accurately, we don't. Since the Earth enjoys spinning on its axis once every 24-hours or so, exposures in excess of about 1 second begin producing star trails unless you have the camera or telescope on some sort of tracking mount.

Fortunately, if you don't have the money to purchase a $1,000+ equatorial mount but still want to take long-exposure astrophotography, the DIY barn door tracking mount above will enable you to do so on the (relatively) cheap.

What Night Sky Photographs Will Look Like Over the Next 7 Billion Years

NASA astronomers announced today that they are certain that our galaxy is on an unavoidable collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy to us. Don't worry though, it won't be happening for another 3.5 billion years or so. What's interesting is that the collision will drastically change what our night sky looks like, and the astronomers released a series of photo illustrations showing what future astrophotographers will be shooting when they point their cameras at the heavens.