Anyone have any good astronomy pictures?

Question

I don't have a telescope yet but I do a little amatuer astrophotography in my spare time. I took an amazing picture of Andromeda Galaxy last night completely on accident while I was trying to snap a photo of Mars. I took the photo with a Kodak Z710 with an 8 second shutter time. Check out my picture @ myspace.com/blakehofmann

Answer 1

http://hubblesite.org/
....this site has.

Answer 2

I wanted to answer your question, Blake, and correct/clarify some of the previous responses... the Andromeda Galaxy is a large, bright (in comparison to most other galaxies visible in the skies from Earth) galaxy visible in the early morning hours at this time of year. Mars is in roughly the same area of the sky right now but not really all that close to the Andromeda Galaxy. I don't believe it's a galaxy in your Mars photo. It may be an artifact, reflection or something along those lines.

As previously mentioned, the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, appears very bright and large for a galaxy (rivaled only by the Large and Small Magallenic Clouds visible from the southern hemisphere). Even though it's relatively bright, it's amazingly faint compared to a point source of light like a star or planet. The Andromeda Galaxy will easily appear in an 8 second shot from a decent digital camera and at the proper focal length and focal ratio. It's unlikely that it would appear in an 8-second image while (A) there is also a bright, nearby object in the frame and (B) the camera being used has extremely high levels of noise (like the Kodak Z710). And in that 8-second exposure, you would only see the bright core of the galaxy, not the extended, faint spiral arms. Again though, I don't believe that's what you're seeing in your photo... Mars and M31 simply aren't that close together now and weren't last night, either.

I kind of know what I'm talking about since I've been imaging the skies for several years now, which brings me to the answer of your actual question. :) There are some astronomy pictures on my Web site at:

http://www.californiastars.net/gallery.html

They're aren't the best in the world but some of them are decent. I hope you enjoy them.

Answer 3

It is totally impossible to accidentally take a picture of the Andromeda galaxy while trying to take a picture of Mars. Mars is hundreds of times smaller and brighter than the Andromeda galaxy. The Andromeda galaxy is not small at all. It is quite large, actually 5 times bigger than the Moon, as seen in our sky. Over 2 degrees wide compared to half a degree for the Moon and less than 1/100 degree for Mars. The only reason it is hard to see is because it isn't bright enough. Also, Mars never gets anywhere near Andromeda in the sky and the two objects could never appear in the same field of view. So that smudge in your picture is not the Andromeda galaxy.

See the source for some of my pictures of planets.

Answer 4

As I noted in my response to your more recent question...your photo is neither the Andromeda Galaxy nor amazing.

Here's the kicker, you're never going to get a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy in an 8-second exposure without some very expensive equipment. Even then it would be a *dim* smudge of light...not a bright one. It would also be very obviously oval-shaped.

Answer 5

Sure... here are the first couple of pictures I took with all my own equipment (I've done others before with borrowed stuff)

http://public.clunet.edu/~sjfahmie/m57-web.jpg
http://public.clunet.edu/~sjfahmie/m13.jpg
http://public.clunet.edu/~sjfahmie/jupiter.jpg