Galaxies in the mountains

Friday, January 6, 2017

Galaxies in the mountains

We're living on a small planet we call Earth. Our planet is located about two-thirds of the way out from the center of out home galaxy the Milky Way, that's about 26,000 light-years away from the center. In this photo you can see the Milky Way stretching up in the sky from behind the mountains.

Our closest neighboring galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy, it's located about 2,5 million light-years. It is the most distant object in the sky that you can see with your unaided eye. Here you can see Andromeda close to the center of the photo as a small disc shaped object. It apparent size in the sky is actually four times the size of a full Moon, but since its outer regions are so dim, we just see the much brighter center of the galaxy.

These two galaxies are actually on a collision course and will eventually merge together. But don't worry, it won’t happen for another 4 billion years. But just for a second, try to imagine what it will look like when Andromeda is much closer to us, that will really be some view.

The bright shining object down to the left is the Moon. At the time of this photo it was about 40% lit but since I used a long exposure time to expose for the Milky Way, the Moon is extremely over exposed.

This photo is a 7 shot panorama shot using a Nikon D810A with a Nikon AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for each photo was 20 seconds, ISO 1600 with f/4.0