Andromeda

[vector7]

What 100 Million Stars Looks Like: NASA Releases a 1.5 Gigapixel Photo of the Andromeda Galaxy

• Published on January 7, 2015 by Michael Zhang

NASA has released the largest and sharpest photograph ever made of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to ours that contains an estimated 1 trillion stars. The new image (above is a crop showing a portion of it) weighs in at 1.5 gigapixels (i.e. 1.5 billion pixels); it’s so big that you would need 600HD televisions to display the entire digital photo.

Captured by the Hubble telescope, the image reportedly shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters. And keep in mind that this is just a 40,000 light year section of the whole spiral galaxy.

This is what a tiny, tiny portion of the photo looks like when zoomed all the way in (the bright star is one of the smaller bright points in the zoomed out photo):



There’s no good way to display the image here that will do it justice, so you’ll have to visit this interactive zoomable photo browser to explore the image for yourself.

For an easier way to experience the sheer scale of this image, check out this 4K video created by YouTube user daveachuk. He took the 4.3 gigabyte photo and created a video fly-through that will give you a jaw-dropping tour in about 3 minutes.

Keep in mind that every little dot you see in this image is a star, and researchers have found that virtually ever star has at least one planet orbiting it. Many of those planets also have moons.

And this is all found inside a single galaxy.

(via Hubble via Engadget)


Want to get an idea what a trillion stars looks like? Created this 4K flythrough of yesterday's release of a 1.5 gigapixel image of part of the Andromeda Galaxy

The Biggest Gigapixel Picture of Andromeda from Hubble[4K]

Super-high resolution image of Andromeda from Hubble (NASA/ESA)

4.5GB file download, edited to a 205GB AVI intermediate video, encoded to a 4GB final video to upload... so much data.

For those who attempt to play this at 4K, your computer has my sympathies.

Thanks for comments and patience while I got the downloads and alternate version sorted out...

[Ryan Ruck]

All of those stars... Makes one feel unbelievably small. Even more so when you consider the following:

(Click on it for the actual full size version)

[American Patriot]

Really, really, really small.

[Ryan Ruck]

As I sit here watching an episode of DS9, it also makes me a bit sad that since we seem to be regressing toward internal breakdown and facing rapidly growing external threats, we'll never get a chance to get off this planet and truly see what is out there for ourselves. At least not in my lifetime...

[Ryan Ruck]

I'm up late and can't sleep so I was out using my new (to me) PVS-14 night vision I picked up and was doing a little stargazing.

Was scanning the sky and came upon something that was not like everything else in the sky I was looking at. It looked like a hazy blob.

I assumed it to be a nebula.

So, I fired up Google Sky Map on my phone, aimed it at the area the blob was in, and it turns out it was actually the Andromeda galaxy!

Didn't get nearly as good a pic as NASA () and cell phone pics through night vision are notoriously bad but, here it is:



It's that fuzzy bit just above and very slightly to the left of that especially bright star near the center.

There is absolutely no way to see that with the naked eye even where I live.

Very cool if I do say so.

[Malsua]

I'd love to have night vision, but it's too much of a luxury at this point. That's really cool that you were able to get a shot of a fricking galaxy!

[Ryan Ruck]

Pick up a used set, seriously.

Yeah, it's a gamble but that's why the prices are so much cheaper and unless you're getting them from someone who has used them consistently for something like hunting, they probably have very little actual use. Don't use eBay though. Use something like the ARFCOM EE and make sure you get an evaluation period from the seller. MUCH cheaper than buying new.

Both my MUM and PVS are used units and cost a fraction of their new counterparts. In fact, what I've spent on both of them, I don't think I've even come up to the price of a single new PVS.