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Wednesday 9 September 2020

More astronomy! The Andromeda Galaxy and planets

The 'seeing' last night was superb, so I decided to experiment with various exposure times / f-stops etc. I don't have an equatorial mount, so even 10 second exposures (because of the rotation of the Earth) results in the stars ending up as streaks rather than points of light. A shorter exposure time needs a higher ISO, so everything is grainy: you can't win!

Nevertheless, I managed a few bits and pieces: note how large the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) actually is: with the naked eye it's a tiny fuzzy object, whereas even these 10 second exposures reveal it to be larger than the full Moon! When you bear in mind that it's 2.5 million light years away, you get an idea of how large it - and the Milky Way - truly are! Just above it you can make out a second blurry oval: M110, another member of the Local Group.

The other images are of Jupiter and four of its moons, a random satellite, Jupiter and Saturn and some terrific lunar crater fields.







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