Mandatory recommendation of the Gigapixels of Andromeda [4K] [1] video/version. Especially with this particular song(!), as the 8K version [2] has a different one which doesn't really give the chills... Although, 60fps makes the image much better. Maybe combine the song from [1] with the video from [2]...
The source picture is the 1.5 gigapixels version (69.536 x 22.230 pixels).
Fun fact: watching the video on certain TV's makes them flicker wildly. Probably because they struggle with many dots in motion. On a monitor it works flawlessly.
It’s probably motion smoothing causing it to flicker on certain TVs. Why motion smoothing exists on TVs is another question. I guess some people want everything to look like a cheap soap opera.
AT 10 trillion kms = 1 light year, 10 quadrillion km = 1000 light years, 10 quintillion kms = 1 million light years. Since Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years away, you are looking at an object 25 quintillion kms away. If that doesnt ring a bill, that is 25000 quadrillion kms away, 25 million trillion kms away! , 25 billion billion kms away!!! Simply put if you travelled 1 billion kms that would be 0.000000004% of the way to reach Andromeda galaxy. Imagine that!
Recreational mathematics, fun.
And if we could see it with the naked eye it would appear six times bigger than a full moon.
At first I thought that was camera noise when I zoomed in, and was wondering why it's so noisy... then realised that's all the stars. Insane.
Same. Every few years it seems I have to refresh certain astronomy facts in my mind. The obvious looking stars are in foreground, in our galaxy. The "noise" is what a trillion stars looks like at 2.5 million light years. Dear brain, remember this please.
I wonder if software can be put to it in order to plot every single star.
I wonder if there were a way to eventually get a stereo image — depth data for each point of light so that we can map Andromeda in three dimensions.
Distance in space is difficult because a dim star could just be a smaller dim star that's close, or a larger bright star that's far away. We have to use a lot of clever tricks (standard candles paired with parallax calculations [1] in particular) just to get distances estimates. We can kind of do this for stars that are very close (relatively speaking), but at the scale of the universe - even measuring the distance to a distant galaxy has a substantial uncertainty factor, let alone the stars within that galaxy!
I think it would help, if they selected a region where to 100 to 1000AU the density was similar to ours, and showed the night sky from a position orbiting a star of comparable size, and then somewhere of significantly higher density.
I always assume that the levels of radiation closer to the galactic core are worse but so would insolation in the wider sense: the star field would be dense enough to illuminate more than the milky way does, for us surely?
It'd be interesting to see an overlay showing images by their age.
Why is it incomplete? I can't find an explanation on this or the NASA site linked from there; its an awfully big chunk missing nearly to the center
There's enough image there, just select the black and hit content aware fill.
Speculating based on the sections:
https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phat
https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phast
It took a decade to get that much. Getting the rest, assuming they aren't able to shrink the chunks, would require a project equal in duration and scope. The JWST can probably capture it with similar resolution in a fraction of the time. If the JWST didn't exist, they'd probably go for another project to fill in the gaps, but it doesn't make sense when a much better telescope is available.
The JWST and Hubble are two totally different telescopes in that Hubble is mainly visible light spectrum where JWST is totally IR spectrum. They can both take an image of the exact same object and the images will look different. They cannot use JWST to fill in the gaps of a Hubble project.
I didn't say anything about JWST filling in the gaps. I said it wouldn't make sense to do another project with Hubble to finish the image when it would take another decade. They can get a scientifically useful image from the missing spots in less time with the new telescope.
Don't need another decade. A few months to get some of the holes at the bottom.
Usually that galaxy is moving over 4,000 miles per hour. With this photo evidence, we can now issue them a speeding ticket, we've got 'em dead to rights
The speed limit is about 186,000 miles/second.
Not for astronomical objects. Their speed may be boosted by the expansion of space.
depends on how you define speed, I suppose
Yeah but good luck seeing them.
417 megapixels image is really nice but it also something people on earth can at least approach. I did a 28 megapixel Andromeda galaxy shot myself without even resorting to mosaics:
https://www.astrobin.com/hqrhe0/
With a few changes I could have easily got somewhere around 100 megapixels if I did a 2x2 mosaic without my reducer on the scope.
There are better cameras and scopes (planewave scopes for example) that getting to 400 megapixel is totally achievable for a high end mature astrophotographer.
Astronomical seeing severely limits the efficacy of even multi-million dollar telescopes. The size of the pixels in this image is ~0.2 arcseconds, which is far below typical seeing limits even in excellent conditions.
Excellent seeing on earth is typically 0.4 arcseconds, so close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing
My setup gives me around 1.92 arc seconds for a point diameter.
> Since Andromeda is so large and relatively close, although still 2.5 million light-years away
Considering those photons are 2.5 millions old, I'd say it took significantly more than a decade
(I'll see myself out)
From the photons' perspective it took no time at all!
No luck catching them electrons, then? It’s just the one electron, actually.
Would love a version with the largest rectangle possible without the black/missing bits
Serious question: Is this what Hubble originally captured? Or unlike bodies in our solar system, maybe with a galaxy compositing isn't necessary?
What do you mean by “originally”? The cameras on Hubble are black and white, and this is a color image.
Anybody else fantasize about what life could be like there? Do you think some civilization there has taken a similar photo of our own galaxy?
Yes, immediately. Think of the stories all those lives could tell. It’s awe inspiring and humbling.
Obviously very cool, but I'm also curious what it can be used for, if any resident astrophysicists are reading this and can chime in...
too bad it's not optimized to view without loading the entire thing to memory...
Yeah we need a Google maps like view.
Seems like there should be a library that does this fairly efficiently for ultra large images.
I did some quick searching, this library seems like the best bet: https://github.com/openseadragon/openseadragon
I hacked together a quick demo using that library on this image: https://andromeda.bsprague.com/
Beautiful, thank you!
Not sure how many 417-megapixel images are out there where this would be something someone works on "over a weekend". We just need the right person to come along at the right time to think it would be a cool thing to do just because.
where is FLIF when it's needed the most