Posted on 09/27/2026 12:29:58 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through Earth's busy skies and with a digital camera that introduces normal imperfections. The picture is a stack of 223 images, each a 300 second exposure, taken from a garden observatory in Portugal during 2019. Obvious image deficiencies include bright parallel airplane trails, long and continuous satellite trails, short cosmic ray streaks, and bad pixels. These imperfections were actually not removed with Photoshop specifically, but rather greatly reduced with a series of computer software packages that included Astro Pixel Processor, DeepSkyStacker, and PixInsight. All of this work was done not to deceive you with a digital fantasy that has little to do with the real likeness of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), but to minimize Earthly artifacts that have nothing to do with the distant galaxy and so better recreate what M31 really does look like.
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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
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I hate to break your heart, but youre not seeing whats obvious me... the consistency of stars, how the stars are spaced throughout the whole picture never changes even towards the center of the galaxy. they are only covered by an ecliptic shaped fog which contains not one single star. there should be millions in the spiral arms.
Its another bullshit art rendition being passed off as real. Andromeda is not a disc of gas. there are millions of stars in it...
Andromeda is 260,000 light years across. You have to zoom in really close to see individual stars.
I apologize... I was just scolded by AI that what I am assuming are background stars are all foreground stars...
(...running for cover arms shielding head!)...
Wow.
Whoa.
wow... kinda humbles ya dont it!? lol
It does humble me. The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and has 100 to 400 billion stars. Andromeda Galaxy is about 260,000 light years across and has about 1 trillion stars (if you have a 1 gigapixel camera zoomed in to fill the frame that is about 1,000 stars per pixel of resolution). The largest known galaxy is Alcyoneus, which is about 16 million light-years across and is 3 billion light years away. The number of stars has not been estimated that I can find..
Unfathomable...
inconceivable.
You keep using that word...
I am still irked to have never found the galaxy, or at least it was too dim to make out.
I suck at stargazing.
Here is a link to a good chart- just scroll down the page-
https://deepskycorner.ch/obj/m31.en.php
Donât go bigger than a pair of 10X50 binoculars- they get heavy after a while and will be hard to keep steady. A smaller pair will be easier to handle. Better yet, if you can mount them on a tripod, they will be much easier to deal with.
If you have really REALLY dark skies, you might be able to see it without binoculars, but you have to know where to look.
You donât suck at stargazing; just be patient with yourself and enjoy being out under the stars. Youâll be amazed at what you can seeâŠ..đ
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