A Galaxy Far Far Away by AstronomyMan

Photography • Space • posted on Feb 03, 2006

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Description

Two Little Galaxies in the Big Dipper. The one on the left is called Bode's Galaxy, the one on the right is called The Cigar Galaxy. In a galaxy far away, along time ago, the one on the left passed very close to the one on the right and destroyed its usual spiral form. We see Bode's face on, and the Cigar edge on. Both are 12 million light years away. So light from each one started coming to us before Renderosity was invented, before fire was invented, before man was invented. Taken with a cheap webcam - 30 x 30 second exposures stacked, layered with 60 x 10 sec exposures stacked. Histogram stretching and other processing with PSP9.

Comments (11)

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Onslow

8:25AM | Fri, 03 February 2006

fascinating shot :)

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TwoPynts

9:53AM | Fri, 03 February 2006

I love shots like this. Really pushes the bounds of creativity as far as your capture methods go? Cheap webcam you say? HOW in gods' name did you manage that? Did the webcam have a superzoom lense?!? Awsome job Simon! I'd love to do stuff like this but the S. Florida light pollution really hides much of the night sky. :/

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AstronomyMan

12:10PM | Fri, 03 February 2006

Actually the webcam is stuffed in the eyepiece hole of a little 80mm telescope. The scope is on a mount that drives the scope eastward at the same rate that the earth is moving so I get long exposures and the stars don't turn into little streaks. You can also attach certain webcams to standard SLR lenses. I have a set of Nikon lenses that I use. you just have to mount it on a driven telescope mount.

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