[HN Gopher] Milky Way, 12 years, 1250 hours of exposures and 125... ___________________________________________________________________ Milky Way, 12 years, 1250 hours of exposures and 125 x 22 degrees of sky Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 485 points Date : 2021-03-17 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (astroanarchy.blogspot.com) (TXT) w3m dump (astroanarchy.blogspot.com) | thanatos519 wrote: | What do I have to do to get the full-size image? The 7000x1300 | pixel image is pretty nice, but I was thinking of making a | 1440dpi print on 4 sheets of A3+. | epaga wrote: | Looks like you'll need to email him directly. | https://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com | ACAVJW4H wrote: | I had the urge to print as well. I doubt he'll be interested in | giving away this masterpiece, atleast for an affordable price. | I'll mail and ask; he might offer a print service maybe. | [deleted] | eutropia wrote: | This got me thinking about treating a surface with Black 3.0 | paint and printing astrophotography images on top of that, but I | wouldn't know how to get a large format printer to safely print | on top of the treated material. | ACAVJW4H wrote: | > My observatory is located in the very center of the city Oulu | in Finland. Due to massive Light Pollution I mainly do ... | | Well I guess most of us live in filthy cesspools of light. | Seriously I wonder what humanity misses out on. I think we would | have been a much better species if only we could see our place in | the universe every night. | hedshodd wrote: | There was this one time where in some city in the US, cannot | remember which, there was a city wide power outage, and some | people were freaking out because they've never seen a non- | polluted sky before. | MattRix wrote: | Would have been a much better species? Bright lights are a very | recent part of our species' history. It's not like humanity had | a reputation for being particularly civilized before the | invention of electric light. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Depends on what you mean by "civilized", but I take your | point. I do wonder, however, if there isn't a correlation | between the increase of light pollution and the trend away | from reverence for gods. In other words, does the ability to | see the grandeur of the heavens on a daily basis influence us | to believe in greater beings? | marc_io wrote: | On a side note: there is a great documentary on light | pollution called "Saving the Dark" (it's on Youtube). This | really has a big impact on us and the environment. | mym1990 wrote: | I do some astrophotography from time to time and it has been a | great way to get away from it all to get some perspective while | stargazing. | | On occasion I venture out into dark sky areas in the US with | friends, and they are always surprised that it is possible to | see the milky way with the naked eye(or just so many stars at | all). | doubtfuluser wrote: | Over that long period of time, isn't there the effect of star | movement at least a tiny bit visible? | [deleted] | notjes wrote: | 12 years might be too short of a time frame for objects that | are moving about 1/1000 of the speed of light. It would be | interesting to see a comparison of 50 or 100 years. The center | should be rotating faster or slower? | shireboy wrote: | This is stunning - both the image itself and the 12 years of | dedication making it. Well done. | neolog wrote: | > Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by an ionized | elements, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue. | | Is there a relationship between those colors and those elements, | or just an arbitrary mapping? | nxpnsv wrote: | Beautiful, and respect! Seems many photographers collaborating | could achieve similarly amazing results a lot faster, is that a | thing and if so can I join? | platz wrote: | It looks a little grainy / too much sharpening to my eye. Natural | images tend have more blended features instead of looking like | sand. | realo wrote: | When someone shows you the moon, do you start talking about her | finger? | | Peace! | platz wrote: | I definitely would | EForEndeavour wrote: | I can kind of see what you mean, but I wonder if this is | actually a result of the subject, not processing. The night sky | is absolutely peppered with pinpoints of light far smaller than | individual image pixels (resolvable stars) which are quite | unlike typical terrestrial scenes. | platz wrote: | The effect seems to be more noticeable in the areas filled | with gas. | | I'm not saying that stars aren't pinpoints or sometimes are | just single pixles, but just it overall looks like some post- | sharpening has definitely been applied aggressively to my | eye. | foo_barrio wrote: | Looking at this pic of the Orion nebula it looks like even | the smoothest, darkest areas have tons of stars in them: * | https://orion2020v5b.spaceforeverybody.com/ | | This is also a much smaller area of the sky. The higher | acuity of the image might actually be more representative | of what the telescope actually sees. The smooth darkness | you are used to seeing might be similar to how some people | prefer music where the treble rolls off (like tube amps or | sennheizer 650s headphones) vs people preferring a more | linear freq response. | platz wrote: | well, the orion image you linked doesn't look like it's | been over-sharpened, in contrast to the OP image. I'm not | saying there's a way to tell just by eyeballing it, but | that's what it smells like. | pdpi wrote: | It has a distinctly HDR-y look to it but no meaningful | sharpening. I think the grain is just a fruit of having noisier | sensors back in 2009 | gbrown wrote: | In astrophotography there's (almost) no such thing as | "natural". It's definitely an aesthetic, but it's based on | "real" data. | platz wrote: | It can be true that it's both based on real data and that | there is an aggressive amount of post-sharpening applied. | gbrown wrote: | This is true, but it's also true that making faint features | visible (like the dark, dusty regions) often requires the | use of local contrast, sharpening, and masks. | | Also, in the case of this specific image, I think it's | important to note just how deep the images are - they're | processed for high resolution in the individual components, | so the mosaic has an absolutely huge resolution. When | downscaled to look at the whole thing zoomed out, that | might give some of the impression of over-sharpness. | jonplackett wrote: | Holy crap the universe is massive. | | It occurred to me the other day that there's barely any science | fiction that even occurs outside our own galaxy (Star Wars being | the exception that proves the rule). And if it does it's usually | something from Andromeda right 'next door'. | | Even Star Trek only leaves the galaxy maybe one time, and that | requires the help of Q. | m463 wrote: | Too bad it's so far away. | | There's that saying... too young to explore the world, too old | to explore the universe. | | When our children's children learn to extend their life, or | figure out some sort of suspended animation, or pload their | brain... what wonders they will see. | divbzero wrote: | This is absolutely incredible. Thank you. | | I would love to see the mosaic extended below Cassiopeia to | include the Andromeda Galaxy. | m463 wrote: | Wow, he _started_ with a Canon EF 200mm f1.8 and worked his way | UP. | jakobdabo wrote: | On a camera in manual mode if you increase the exposure time, you | must compensate the increased amount of light coming to the | sensor by decreasing the aperture or the ISO. Can anybody please | explain, how is it possible to have such a long exposure without | overexposing the image? | Miraste wrote: | If you want longer exposures than your lowest ISO can handle | you can also use neutral density filters, which go over the | lens and reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral-density_filter | gbrown wrote: | Astrophotography is less like photography and more like | scientific data acquisition. | | To specifically answer your question though, this is "1250 | hours of exposures" and not "a 1250 hour exposure". | ksml wrote: | Note that these images are made from many exposures that are | then processed and combined, and the _total_ exposure time is | given. The individual exposure times were probably long, but I | 'm guessing on the order of minutes, not hours. (Actually, if | you photograph stars with an exposure time that is too long, | then you get star trails in the image.) | Normal_gaussian wrote: | Trails appear very quickly, at focal lengths of around 20mm | (typical dslr kit lens) they are obvious in 20-30 seconds, | with a 100mm lens (start of telephoto range) they are obvious | in 3-5 seconds. This of course depends on the res of your | camera (I shoot with an 8MP and a 24MP). | | To get rid of the trails you need a tracking mount. The | better the mount the smoother and longer it tracks. | Astrophotography is expensive... | gbrown wrote: | > if you photograph stars with an exposure time that is too | long, then you get star trails in the image | | He was using a tracking mount. At 200mm you can't image for | more than a few seconds without trailing. | aylmao wrote: | By using very low ISOs. You want to use the lowest ISO possible | because the lower the ISO the less noise in the picture, and | noise in the night sky can be very noticeable since you are | photographing a ton of tiny dots against a black background. | samstave wrote: | Why arent we having a full stream of space pics constantly coming | from the thousands of satellites we have in the sky? | | Why do we have to wait on a backyard astronomer to post something | like this? | nogbit wrote: | Because those sats are pointing down at us. | samstave wrote: | :-) I know, it was the proverbial "why" | neha_t wrote: | Good time to take this to an auction and sell as an NFT :) | jointpdf wrote: | Earthlings that liked this link may also enjoy: | https://www.astrobin.com/iotd/archive/ | | (massive archive of amateur astrophotography images + | equipment/processing details) | ClosedPistachio wrote: | The full panorama is spectacular: | https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LK-I6WIOp8w/YE3ejvMEc8I/AAAAAAAAS... | amelius wrote: | Are those colors real, or just synthesized by the visualization | technique? | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Real colors is always a particular definition, because | everyone of us see the colors differently, for the | astrophotography is another different thing because the | colors are made by frequencies of the light spectrum. Try to | read this for more info: http://dslr- | astrophotography.com/right-colors-astrophotos/ | | > Conclusion on color calibration: | | "There are multiple definitions of what it means to have | 'correct colors' in your astrophotos. Therefor this always | will be a matter of personal preference and everyone will | have to figure out what their own vision on the matter is and | pick a method of calibrating the colors accordingly" | ImprovedSilence wrote: | Very interesting article, well worth the read. | dr_orpheus wrote: | They are synthesized, from the article "Image in mapped | colors from the light emitted by an ionized elements, | hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue." | amelius wrote: | What do the real colors look like? | enriquto wrote: | just look up to the sky at night. They are so dim that | you cannot really distinguish their hue. | amelius wrote: | When I look up to the sky at night I just see reflections | of the lights emitted by my city. It often is an orange | glow. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | This is too dystopian this early in the morning. | ImprovedSilence wrote: | To the naked eye from earth, it looks black and white, | and you wouldn't be able to see that much detail. What | they "really" are is more complicated, as indicated by | other responses. | elteto wrote: | Hard to tell without being closer :) Nebulae might not | even emit that strongly in the spectrum that we humans | can see. A lot of these pictures are taken with special | narrowband filters that isolate wavelengths for specific | components, such as Oxygen or Hydrogen. Then these | narrowband images are combined and assigned to the R, G, | B channels. A popular palette is the "Hubble Palette" | because, well, that is what the Hubble uses. | nsilvestri wrote: | Depends on the filter used. I am assuming the author is | using one of these hydrogens (probably Ha) and O-III and | S-II. Each of these black-and-white images with this | filter are used as the data for a single RGB channel in | an image. Their wavelengths are, and would like like to | the naked eye [1]: | | Ha (656 nm) bright red | | Hb (486 nm) deep blue | | O-III (496 nm and 501 nm) greenish blue to green | | S-II (672 nm) deeper red | | The color mapping the author uses is called the Hubble | Space Telescope pallet, where hydrogen = green, sulfur = | red, and oxygen = blue. | | [1] http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~yetkin/code/wavelength_to_r | gb/wave... | dylan604 wrote: | Depends on what you mean by real colors. The light is so | faint, that human eyes cannot make it out. However, long | exposure photography with a CMOS sensor will bring out | colors without any filters. Are those the real colors? | There are tons of examples of these types of shots. | Search for The World At Night (TWAN) for some great | examples | mnw21cam wrote: | That's not the full panorama. Try | https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TqRxEAjrDYI/YFCLF-H8K3I/AAAAAAAAS... | instead. | simonh wrote: | I like this one: | https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/ | lolptdr wrote: | Damn, this is impressive. Wish there were more annotations of | other notable sky objects in addition to what's shown. | mnw21cam wrote: | Try https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_0wX_SbN2V0/YFBrGdGEasI/AAAA | AAAAS... for an image with more annotations. | jcims wrote: | For folks passing through it's the full panorama but at 7% of | the full resolution. | soheil wrote: | I'm so glad we're used to clouds on Earth and that our human | brain evolved to intuitively understand them because as it | happens the cosmos are just like clouds. It'd suck if we looked | at them and were lost in their perplexity. | realo wrote: | When I look at this, it is hard to believe that life (and | intelligent life) only exist on planet Earth... | | Very hard to believe. | ekianjo wrote: | Thats not hard to believe once you understand how unprobable | life seems to be and especially in the very long term. The | universe is a very violent place and cosmic events act as great | filters all the time. | divbzero wrote: | Then again, this photo mosaic spans just one arm of one | galaxy in the visible universe. | 4silvertooth wrote: | When I look at this I feel life must be common. Maybe some dot | in there must be planet full of dinasaurs. | xaedes wrote: | If we would find a huge natural mirror or similar - far away, | maybe we would be able to see our past earth still populated | with dinosaurs. | layer8 wrote: | There are roughly 10^23 stars in the observable universe. We | really have no idea how likely intelligent life is to evolve. | It could be 1/10^10 per star, in which case intelligent life | would be a fairly typical thing (dozens in the milky way), or | it could be just 1/10^100, in which case we could be the only | ones. Unlikelihoods can compound very quickly. | nonfamous wrote: | Love the use of the apparent size of the moon for scale. Really | gives you an awesome sense of what you're _not_ seeing in the sky | in cities with your own eyes. | CliffStoll wrote: | Superb work, astonishing dedication, and a beautiful result! | | High congratulations! | f430 wrote: | stupid question but how did we realize we were in a galaxy and | how are we able to take pictures of it??? | cozzyd wrote: | Can I buy a large print of this somewhere? | gilbetron wrote: | If you can get this printed on metal, it would look amazing. My | wife is IT for an astronomy dept and they have metal prints all | over the place that are just stunning! | m463 wrote: | I think it would be nice to have it as wallpaper that slowly | navigates the galaxy while I'm working. | pjmorris wrote: | I have the same question! | | Related question: If someone wanted to print something like | this for themselves, how would they go about it? Say, I have an | image or photo and I wanted to make a high quality print | suitable for framing and hanging on, say, my office wall. Is | this an 'Ask HN' question? | dsr_ wrote: | Do you want the cheapest way to do it or the highest quality, | or something in between? | | If you have an image that fits in less than 20x30", CostCo or | another mass printing service can do it for $10. They won't | do any adjustment, so the colors may be off a little. | | They'll print on canvas to 30x40" for $120. That's only | 150dpi; it doesn't look great up close, but is pretty good | from 3+ feet away. Again, colors are what they are. | | High quality printing is a thing that you talk about with a | professional printer (the person, not the machine) for each | job. Prices generally start at $100 or so for smallish | prints, and can go up to $1500 or more for large, permanent- | art quality work. | pjmorris wrote: | More like the highest quality, but probably price sensitive | which means 'somewhere in between.' I've thought about | taking a test image to Costco to see how it comes out on | metal, but figured that there might be higher quality | options. Thanks for your examples, looking to see what | others post. | dsr_ wrote: | Remember that when you work with a good image printer, | you're paying for their expertise and time -- and you | won't have to re-print failures, because they'll consult | with you to get it right. | | One friend of mine spent several hundred dollars at an | online printer in $40 increments trying to get it right. | Cerium wrote: | I have worked with Inprintz (https://inprintz.com) they are | in the south bay area. They can do prints on photographic | media up to 5 foot by 10 foot. | cozzyd wrote: | I mean, you can always segment it into several smaller prints | and then stitch them together (carefully!), but I'd rather | the author get some cut of it than me doing it myself at | Walgreen's or Staples. | fixie wrote: | I've done high quality large prints from | https://www.bayphoto.com/. They did a great job and have | different archival paper to choose from. Got the print from | there and used a local framing shop to get it professionally | framed. | elteto wrote: | Second bayphoto for metal prints. I have gotten stunning | results. | dding wrote: | Wow amazing work! The scale of this project reminds me of another | photographer's five year project of creating a 2.5 gigapixel | photo of Orion: https://orion2020v5b.spaceforeverybody.com/ | kgran wrote: | Looking at these pictures, I've began to ponder how much of an | influence the night sky has been in religion and mythology | throughout the millennia. | uhtred wrote: | Agreed. I very recently was thinking about how humans up to a | few hundred years ago must have seen the most breath taking | night skies. Imagine a native American standing in a clearing | at night 2000 years ago, with zero light pollution, looking | at the night sky and just wondering what it is all about. | wahern wrote: | Even w/ a clear desert sky hundreds of miles from the | nearest city (e.g. middle of Nevada), the sky looks | _nothing_ like these pictures. Astrophotography uses | exposure times many multiples--and usually several orders | of magnitude--longer than the human eye. | | Can you see the Milkyway? No, not really; not without | prompting. If you have no idea what to look for, the disc | is just a barely imperceptible, slight increase in | otherwise meager (relative to astrophotographs) star | density. I've never seen it, nor other constellations, | because I don't really know what to look for, though I've | spent many hours staring up at the sky from various places, | including extremely remote desert and mountain locales-- | Western U.S., Northern Mexico, Mongolia, Ecuador, Chile, | etc. | | Of course, there's no way to understand the awe and | wonderment somebody lacking our knowledge, experience, and | expectations may have experienced. Especially if they had | never seen an astrophotograph. | | EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if | astrology, navigation, and astronomy might have developed | more slowly if the human eye had greater fidelity. With | only several thousand stars visible (much fewer readily | discernible, especially if you're not an adolescent w/ | fresh corneas), the _motion_ of stars probably stands out | more. Imagine trying to recognize and track the planets on | a background as dense as an astrophotograph. Where to | start? Would you even recognize the relative motion? People | had much fewer distractions during nighttime back then, but | it still seems substantially more daunting. | quesera wrote: | I agree with your larger premise, but: | | > Can you see the Milkyway? No, not really | | This is not my experience. I have seen the Milky Way very | clearly from a few locations in the US. None are | particularly remote -- all are just a few hours drive | from the large cities I've lived in. Winter months are | clearer than summer. | jjnoakes wrote: | Yeah I agree. Not only have I seen the milky way, but | I've seen andromeda with my naked eye from the right | place on the right night, within a day's drive from very | populated cities. | mathewsanders wrote: | +1. I've not seen it for 10 years (since I've lived in | the United States) but growing up in New Zealand, looking | up at the Milky Way with your naked eye, it's definitely | clear the increased density of stars. Doesn't look | anything like photos, but very beautiful. | dekhn wrote: | The path to modern astronomy went like this: cultures that | lasted a long time (Multiple hundreds of years) typically | developed observatories that defined the yearly calendar as | well as dates of religious observances. Many times, their | observations got very accurate and they could predict various | things, although surprising stuff still happened. Eventually, | civilizations lasted through multiple solar eclipse cycles | and noticed they were periodic (keeping great records for | hundreds of years and maintaing a class of people who can | work with them is nontrivial). This eventually led to people | being able to predict nearly all planet's motions with | surprising accuracy (see the antikythera mechanism). | | So I think it's had a huge influence ,and one that ultimately | led to a scientific understanding of the cosmos. At this | point, JPL can predict the location of nearly every major | solar object for decades into the future and the main | challenege is determining whether object movement is truly | chaotic. | titzer wrote: | And in the modern world, we are blind to it because of light | pollution. It's sad. One of the most amazing experiences | ever, a truly dark, clear sky at night, is only accessible if | you travel off-continent. | birktj wrote: | That is exactly the feeling I get the couple of times when I | am out hiking hiking and see the most spectacular winter | night sky. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere and | seeing the dark sky with an uncountable number of stars is | indescribable. I believe it is a great loss of modern society | and I really hope we are able to do something about it, we | could do just fine without most of the street lighting we | have today. | phaedrus wrote: | Something about that Orion photo in particular makes it seem | beyond belief that there is not other life around other stars | in the galaxy. | quesera wrote: | For me, it was this image and story that removed any shred of | doubt: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field | | The tiny speck of dust that is our whole world is less than a | grain of sand on the beaches of the universe. | | We are not alone. | | Which doesn't mean that we would want to meet any of our | neighbors! | clon wrote: | This is fantastic. | | I immediately wondered how he managed to seamlessly mosaic | together what is surely hundreds of images and thousands of | subs. Here are the details: | https://space4everybody.com/processing-details/ | | And equipment: https://space4everybody.com/technical-details- | equipment/ | | Nothing too fancy (in astrophotography relative terms). A | decent refractor and mono camera (such parameters have come | down in price by 2-3 times, ASI2600MM is comparable) and most | importantly, a solid pier/mount. 267 Individual | panels (including reshoots) 12,816 Individual light | frames 65,000 x 35,000 in it's entirety 5 States | traversed to image 640.8 Imaging hours 500+ Editing | hours 2.5 Gigapixel Image 1.6 Pixel scale 5 | Years 1 Mosaic | | Just WOW | benfarahmand wrote: | This is amazing! When taking long exposures like this over a | significant amount of time, does anyone know how astronomers | account for stellar parallax and/or the sun's orbit in the milky | way? Are these factors too small to affect long exposure photos? | And if they are too small to affect a long exposure photo, at | what point does it become an issue? | titzer wrote: | Stellar parallax isn't a big effect. It wasn't even observable | until the 1800s. Even the Hubble cannot measure parallax past | about 10,000 lightyears, which is about 10% of the size of the | Milky Way. For earth bound telescopes at this scale, it's | totally negligible. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-17 23:00 UTC)