How do people get pictures of the Milkey Way?

Question

There are pictures of the Milkey Way, but I do not understand how we got those pictures. If we are in it, how did we get the pictures?

Answer 1

They take many wideangle pictures over a period of many nights. Years even. And then when they have pictures of the entire night sky they put all those pictures together in a computer to make one panoramic image. Like so:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051004.html
Although the entire galaxy is in this image we naturally can´t see all of it. The central bulge and the huge dustclouds block our view. So we cannot see much more than maybe 30-40% of the Milky Way.
And as Linda said pictures are taken in different wavelenghts to reveal what visible light can´t.
Through X-rays:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041106.html
Through infrared:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070210.html
Through radio:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020803.html

Answer 2

We see the Milky Way edge on from a position somewhat out from its middle, hence the stars are thicker in July when we are looking through the bulge in the Milky Way than in January when we are looking away from its center.

To get that picture (it is easy), get the fastest film you can find, focus on infinity, and leave the shutter open for about twenty seconds. If you don't have a tripod, put a piece of cardboard in front of the lens, lay the camera on its back, open the shutter, and take the cardboard away. After twenty seconds, replace the cardboard and close the shutter. With shutter speeds longer than twenty seconds, the rotation of the earth causes blurring. If times are too much shorter, the film will get too little light. Try to choose a dark location when the moon isn't in the sky.

It is harder to do this with a digital camera, where long exposures lead to dots in the image from electronic causes.

Sorry if I told you more than you wanted to know.

Answer 3

They generally go to a dark area with a camera that they can control the shutter speed with, or a digital camera that was designed for astrophotography, mount it on something they can do tracking with, and take a photo of the milky way over a period of a few seconds.

When you look up at the sky this time of year and see the milky band we call the milky way, you are actually looking into the galaxy on edge, and you can actually only see half of it, like looking at half of a flying saucer. From the northern hemisphere, the nucleus is actually located on the southern horizon near the constellation Sagittarius. You don't see a bright glowing ball over there because most of the nucleus is obscured by dust.

To see throug this dust, astronomers must take photos using infrared light. Here is a photo of such an image probably taken from someplace near the Earth's equator, or over it.

http://www.phys.ualberta.ca/~pogosyan/teaching/ASTRO_322/images/milkyway_infrared.png

You see we are located about 3/4 of the way from the nucleus and slightly above the plane of the galaxy so this time of year when we are facing inward we are looking into it.

Answer 4

Use a digital camera with a tripod, and shoot it through a telescope.

Similarly this can be done with a microscope for small objects.

Good luck.

All of those anwsers below are very useless. You can take pictures of whatever you want as long as you have the focusing capabilities. I'm not an astrology buff, so I don't know how far away that galaxy is, but if you have or can access a sufficent telescope to see the milky way, you can take pictures of it through a camera. The tripod is an absoulte neccessity, because the camera needs to be completely still. A normal point and shoot digital camera may work, if you have a "distance" function, but a real camera with the proper lens might be needed.

Look at the other side of magnification, microscopes... All of the other anwsers hold no water with that. So long as the microscope can focus on something, it can be photographed. (I don't think REAL pictures of cells, bacteria are computer generated... LOL)

For astrologists to take pictures, it costs billions of dollars..... We do have people who live in space you know... Think of how far we can send robots with high powers camera phones, lol.

Answer 5

most of them are probably pictures of other galaxies or more common they are created by a computer. we have the technology to see stars at the other side of the galaxy, so we can map the entire galaxy. once a computer does that they can just make it look like a picture normally would. we dont have any actual pictures because it would take millions of years for us to get to a place that far away. its just computerized

its seems like only the person below me and the one above me knows where the milky way is, and there were in it...

Answer 6

When you go outside in the countryside where it is dark, you can look up and see the Milky Way. It is a glowing band arching across the sky. You can also take pictures of it.

Now you're right in that we can only see part of it - the side that we are on. We can't see through the middle of it to the other side, but it probably looks a lot like our side of it.

From the part we can see, we can tell that it is a spiral galaxy, a lot like Andromeda which we can see.

Answer 7

Ano whats his name, (cant pronounce it cant spell it LOL) is the closest. Time exposure and the "milky way can be seen on film. The white band we call the milky way is us (on the outer part of one side) looking to the center, the hub. If you are talking about a complete picture of the milky way, it is the Andromadae Galaxy you are seeing a picture of that science says is our sister galaxy and we look like that.

Answer 8

Since a lot of the Milky Way is hidden from our view by dust and gas clouds, they use different wavelengths to gather the "light" we can't see.
The Hubble, Spitzer and other telescopes can image in ultraviolet, infrared, xray, and gamma rays. These wavelenghts are not blocked by the nebulas and dust and gas in the spiral arms.
Since our galaxy is similar in a lot of ways to other spirals, they can also use Andromeda, the Whirlpool, and other spiral galaxies as a reference (along with the telescope data) to combine the images digitally and create what they believe is a realistic image of the Milky Way.

Answer 9

If you have a camera which you can keep the shutter open for a "long exposure" the milky way will slowly show itself on the film. The longer the exposure the brighter the image

Answer 10

You can get pictures of your house from inside. They are pictures of the inside, which looks different than the outside, but they are still pictures of your house. Same with the Milky Way galaxy. All our pictures are from the inside. Any pictures you may have seen from outside are either artists representations of what they think it would look like from outside, or pictures of other galaxies.