This image serves as a reminder to choose the right scope for the job. If I’d used the WO-Star71 wide-field telescope instead of the AT8RC I would have been able to capture the whole galaxy. Instead, here’s a cropped version of the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away and yet it is our closest major galaxy. Just to put that in perspective, that means the nearest galaxy to us, is a 2.5 million year journey away from us …. assuming we found a way to travel at the speed of light. Still worried about the minutia of our own existence? I hope not, there’s far more to this life!
Captured in good old Red, Green and Blue, this image is also the first time I used a new set of filters from Astrodon. Astrodon is a small company that makes the most incredible pieces of glass that filter light in gorgeous ways. I bought a set of their wide-band RGB and narrow-band Hydrogen-Alpha, Oxygen-3 and Sulfur-2 filters and have never wanted for any other filters since.
This image was created from the following data:
All data was captured from the very polluted skies of San Jose.
