M81 and M82

[moonshinegnomie]

2 galaxies about 11 million light years away from earth
a total of 14 1/2 hours of exposure time in my backyard

[URL=https://astrob.in/full/7zk204/0/][IMG]?insecure[/IMG][/URL]

[GiqueCee]

1. How many light years...

... apart are those two galaxies estimated to be? And how many of those other "stars" are actually galaxies as well?
The mind boggles at the vastness of space. I love to be boggled.

[moonshinegnomie]

5. about 150k light years

most of teh other stars are just stars. I have a wider field shot where you can easily see 4 galaxies that are part of a group with these 2 plus many others that just look lke stars. i n this shot most of the stars are just that stars.

[Phoenix61]

12. How many of those stars no longer exist but their

last rays of light are still streaming across the universe?

[Danascot]

2. Congrats for a stunning photo

and thanks for sharing.

[democrank]

3. This photo is really something.

Thank you~

[Just Jerome]

4. Very cool !

Thank you.
And thank Messier if you should run into him.

[LymphocyteLover]

6. Fantastic image! How do you do 14 hours of exposure though? Is that over a few nights?

[moonshinegnomie]

10. yes,multiple nights

with astrophotography rather than one super long exposure you take a series of shorter exposures and use special software to stack the individual exposures together. because the object is in he same position relative to other stars you can use exposures taken a while apart.
this shot is actually a total of 175 separate 5 minute exposures stacked and processed in specialized software

[LymphocyteLover]

20. very cool!

[marble falls]

7. So you have a tracking telescope?

[moonshinegnomie]

9. yes i do

[marble falls]

21. Nice work!

[2naSalit]

8. Wow!

[Ray Bruns]

11. Donald Trump has just signed an executive order renaming galaxies M81 and M82 as

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

[Buddyzbuddy]

13. That's so awsome! Thank you for sharing.

[Fla Dem]

14. Mind boggling to know there are thousand of galaxies out there in space, many like ours.

Just knowing that Earth is in a Solar System in the Milky Way Galaxy with millions of other stars, planets and solar systems is sometimes too overwhelming to grasp and there are billions of other galaxies out there. So many questions, so few answers.

[padfun]

15. So those aren't in our local group.

Are they the closest galaxies to our local group?

[padfun]

16. Oh, I see they're in the big dipper

And in the M81 galaxy group

[Magoo48]

17. Way Kool, thanks.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

18. This is an astonishing photo! Thank you so much for sharing your work.

[Martin68]

19. Very impressive. Thanks for sharing.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

22. Wow!

Nicely done!

[wendyb-NC]

23. That is truly cosmic

Excellent and very skilled photography there. It's amazing, thank you for posting it.