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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Andromeda before Photoshop
NASA ^ | 27 Sep. 2026 | Image Credit: Kees Scherer

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.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: apod; nasa

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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.

1 posted on 09/27/2026 12:29:58 PM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

2 posted on 09/27/2026 12:30:20 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

3 posted on 09/27/2026 12:30:43 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: 21stCenturion; 21twelve; 31R1O; 4everontheRight; A Navy Vet; A_perfect_lady; abb; AFB-XYZ; ...
Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

4 posted on 09/27/2026 12:31:26 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

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...


5 posted on 09/27/2026 12:44:09 PM PDT by sit-rep (I may be Dumb, but I'm not Stupid!)
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To: sit-rep

Andromeda is 260,000 light years across. You have to zoom in really close to see individual stars.


6 posted on 09/27/2026 12:47:45 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

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!)...


7 posted on 09/27/2026 12:59:02 PM PDT by sit-rep (I may be Dumb, but I'm not Stupid!)
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To: sit-rep
Here is a good video of zooming in on Andromeda. The only thing you can see from a far zoom are foreground stars, background galaxies, orbiting cluster galaxies or supernovas. Zoomed all the way, most stars are just small dots.

Youtube: gigapixels of andromeda 4k

8 posted on 09/27/2026 1:11:06 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Wow.


9 posted on 09/27/2026 1:18:55 PM PDT by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as )
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To: MtnClimber

Whoa.


10 posted on 09/27/2026 1:19:01 PM PDT by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as )
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To: MtnClimber

wow... kinda humbles ya dont it!? lol


11 posted on 09/27/2026 1:21:28 PM PDT by sit-rep (I may be Dumb, but I'm not Stupid!)
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To: sit-rep

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..


12 posted on 09/27/2026 1:37:30 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Unfathomable...


13 posted on 09/27/2026 1:57:05 PM PDT by sit-rep (I may be Dumb, but I'm not Stupid!)
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To: sit-rep

inconceivable.


14 posted on 09/27/2026 2:29:29 PM PDT by Doctor Congo
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To: Doctor Congo

You keep using that word...


15 posted on 09/27/2026 2:51:31 PM PDT by null and void (Iran Pres Masoud Pezeshkian: “Common sense is a good thing ... Common sense is really a good thing.")
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