417-megapixel Andromeda galaxy panorama took over a decade to make
101 comments
·January 17, 2025Medox
nixass
These kind of videos are great but what makes them even better is background music selection. Videos like this (as well as astronomy related channels) are the main reason why my music taste shifted from mainstream to indie music makers like Carbon Based Lifeforms, Sync24, Pete Namlook, Solar Fields, Stellardrone, Cell.. to name few.
radiorental
Have loved some of those for years and never heard of others. Thanks for the recommendations and it sort of speaks to how special and unique they are (o;
archerx
It’s probably motion smoothing causing it to flicker on certain TVs. Why motion smoothing exists on TVs is another question. I guess some people want everything to look like a cheap soap opera.
The5thElephant
It's not so simple. Background panning on modern TVs can look very juttery/flickery with motion-smoothing completely off. OLEDs can turn on and off very quickly, and 24 frames a second really isn't that many, so you end up seeing each frame rather distinctly instead of the more smoothed out and less instant frame updates you got on older TVs.
I've found the lowest motion-smoothing setting makes watching stuff like this far more enjoyable while avoiding the awful soap-opera effect you get from higher settings.
It felt awful to admit to myself since I hated on motion-smoothing for so long, but I simply cannot not see the 24 frames in pretty much all scenes where the camera is panning and background has to move a lot.
LeifCarrotson
If you can't reliably stream 4k or 8k 60fps, or even if you could and are stymied by Youtube compression (your 'smart TV' may be turning this incompressible video into meaningless snow), grab the source from the author as a download over Bittorent:
vivzkestrel
AT 10 trillion kms = 1 light year, 10 quadrillion km = 1000 light years, 10 quintillion kms = 1 million light years. Since Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years away, you are looking at an object 25 quintillion kms away. If that doesnt ring a bill, that is 25000 quadrillion kms away, 25 million trillion kms away! , 25 billion billion kms away!!! Simply put if you travelled 1 billion kms that would be 0.000000004% of the way to reach Andromeda galaxy. Imagine that!
WA
And even more: Every object you can see with the naked eye in the sky is within our milky way, except for the Andromeda galaxy and a handful of other galayies. If you know exactly where to look, you can see it as a little cloud with the naked eye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_galaxies#Naked-eye_gal...
xhrpost
That led me down a bit of a rabbit hole and I found this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_galaxy_groups_and_clus...
So there are actually a few galaxies visible with the naked eye outside of our local group even. However, all are within our local supercluster.
dreamcompiler
Star Trek ships travel (very roughly) 1000x the speed of light at Warp 9. So it would take the Enterprise (or Voyager) 2500 years to reach Andromeda at max speed.
vivzkestrel
that is still unfathomably slow i am afraid, looking at farther galaxies like the cartwheel galaxy at 500 million light years or hoag s object at 612 million light years, this star trek ship would take 50000 years at the minimum to reach there
TheSpiceIsLife
Recreational mathematics, fun.
And if we could see it with the naked eye it would appear six times bigger than a full moon.
mytailorisrich
It is visible to the naked eye in good locations and conditions, actually.
chgs
It’s about the width of three finders on an outstretched hand.
divbzero
And yet, Andromeda is the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way: next door neighbors in the small patch of the Universe known as the Local Group.
vivzkestrel
the further ones such as the cartwheel galaxy = 500 million light years = 5000 quintillion kms and hoag's object 600 million light years at 6000 quintillion kms are unfathomable to like ever reach. Given a quintillion has 1 followed by 18 zeroes, to cover 0.1% of a quintillion, we gotta travel 1 quadrillion kms, how the hell do we ever do that
airstrike
Wormholes!
timewizard
> If that doesnt ring a bill
That'll be 23 Zettameters, please.
NKosmatos
Funny how come the original post by NASA was seen be fewer people here on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42731686
I guess it has to do with the time and day of posting something, on how much it will be upvoted and hopefully rise out of the new posts pit :-)
sabellito
Thanks for this, couldn't access this posts link because of this:
> We value your privacy
> With your permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and identification through device scanning. You may click to consent to our and our 1464 partners’ processing as described above.
No reject all button.
kuschku
Weird, I only have to click:
1. Reject all
2. Legitimate Interest
3. Object all
4. Save & Exit
But then I'm in EU
LeifCarrotson
I don't have to click anything. uBlock nuked 26 elements, EFF PrivacyBadger reports 14 trackers blocked, and Ghostery NeverConsent blocked the InMobi cookie popup entirely.
flatfuzz
[dead]
dang
It's largely random, but yeah that was a miss. Probably too late to fix now. Sorry :(
andyjohnson0
I've never seen Andromeda, even when I was in a deep dark sky area and could remember where to look. This [1] NASA picture of the day shows, enhanced to be visible, just how big it actually is in the night sky.
dylan604
The first time I imaged Andromeda was a total accident. I was shooting a timelapse with a wide angle, and I kept seeing this fuzzy patch in the images. It was one of those “oh neat” moments.
the__alchemist
I'm still having a hard time: It's difficult to tell the camera FOV.
I looked it up: it's 1/4 of a degree. The sun and moon are each 1/2 a degree.
So, Andromeda appears half (diameter) of the sun or moon.
jeffbradberry
That is not accurate -- the Andromeda Galaxy is over 3 degrees wide. About 6 full moons.
the__alchemist
Thanks for the correction!
queuebert
And getting bigger, as it is moving toward us on a collision course.
wongogue
Did you ask an AI?
bdcravens
> Since Andromeda is so large and relatively close, although still 2.5 million light-years away
Considering those photons are 2.5 millions old, I'd say it took significantly more than a decade
(I'll see myself out)
0_____0
From the photons' perspective it took no time at all!
liamwire
No luck catching them electrons, then? It’s just the one electron, actually.
myko
Is this a Hot Fuzz reference? Love that movie
euroderf
So from the photon's PoV, it is carrying state instantaneously across the entire universe. Weird.
BurningFrog
If the photon had a mind, this would make it go crazy.
sen
At first I thought that was camera noise when I zoomed in, and was wondering why it's so noisy... then realised that's all the stars. Insane.
exodust
Same. Every few years it seems I have to refresh certain astronomy facts in my mind. The obvious looking stars are in foreground, in our galaxy. The "noise" is what a trillion stars looks like at 2.5 million light years. Dear brain, remember this please.
divbzero
The article mentions that the galaxy is a big target for Hubble to image but doesn’t specify exactly how large: Andromeda stretches 3° across our sky compared to our Moon’s apparent diameter of 0.5°. It would be quite a sight to behold if it were bright enough to see by naked eye.
nejsjsjsbsb
Is it not (assume no light pollution)
AngryData
It is visible if you know where to look, but still not exactly the easiest thing to discern since it is just a fuzzy patch to the naked eye.
DiogenesKynikos
The easiest way to see it is with averted vision (looking slightly away from Andromeda, so that it falls on the most sensitive part of your retina). Unfortunately, though, with the naked eye, it just looks like a faint smudge.
jajko
I've seen it very clearly with my naked eyes in Argentina. One prerequisite though - it was 5500m high on Aconcagua camp (we camped also in 6000m but sky was the last thing I was concerned about there). Any decent mountain ie in European alps will give you massively starry night if sky is clear, but that place was a notch above.
Those few unfortunates who died on 8000m peaks by ie getting lost and had the chance to see a starry night must have seen quite a spectacle.
petee
Why is it incomplete? I can't find an explanation on this or the NASA site linked from there; its an awfully big chunk missing nearly to the center
Kye
Speculating based on the sections:
https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phat
https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phast
It took a decade to get that much. Getting the rest, assuming they aren't able to shrink the chunks, would require a project equal in duration and scope. The JWST can probably capture it with similar resolution in a fraction of the time. If the JWST didn't exist, they'd probably go for another project to fill in the gaps, but it doesn't make sense when a much better telescope is available.
dylan604
The JWST and Hubble are two totally different telescopes in that Hubble is mainly visible light spectrum where JWST is totally IR spectrum. They can both take an image of the exact same object and the images will look different. They cannot use JWST to fill in the gaps of a Hubble project.
Kye
I didn't say anything about JWST filling in the gaps. I said it wouldn't make sense to do another project with Hubble to finish the image when it would take another decade. They can get a scientifically useful image from the missing spots in less time with the new telescope.
formerly_proven
There's enough image there, just select the black and hit content aware fill.
null
deadbabe
Anybody else fantasize about what life could be like there? Do you think some civilization there has taken a similar photo of our own galaxy?
WhitneyLand
Yes, immediately. Think of the stories all those lives could tell. It’s awe inspiring and humbling.
bhouston
417 megapixels image is really nice but it also something people on earth can at least approach. I did a 28 megapixel Andromeda galaxy shot myself without even resorting to mosaics:
https://www.astrobin.com/hqrhe0/
With a few changes I could have easily got somewhere around 100 megapixels if I did a 2x2 mosaic without my reducer on the scope.
There are better cameras and scopes (planewave scopes for example) that getting to 400 megapixel is totally achievable for a high end mature astrophotographer.
JBorrow
Astronomical seeing severely limits the efficacy of even multi-million dollar telescopes. The size of the pixels in this image is ~0.2 arcseconds, which is far below typical seeing limits even in excellent conditions.
bhouston
Excellent seeing on earth is typically 0.4 arcseconds, so close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing
My setup gives me around 1.92 arc seconds for a point diameter.
JBorrow
That 'excellent seeing' is for sites that are chosen for telescopes. Typical seeing from sea level is much worse:
- https://www.ing.iac.es/astronomy/development/hap/dimm.html
- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fig-C1-Seeing-distributi...
- https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/9/2225
Around 1-2 arcseconds is 'good' seeing in your backyard. There is a good reason for telescopes to be on some of the tallest mountains on Earth.
mnw21cam
And you can do tricks such as lucky imaging or active optics (depending on your budget) to further improve the resulting resolution. Lucky imaging is tricky on something as dim as Andromeda, but has been shown to be just about possible.
ggm
I think it would help, if they selected a region where to 100 to 1000AU the density was similar to ours, and showed the night sky from a position orbiting a star of comparable size, and then somewhere of significantly higher density.
I always assume that the levels of radiation closer to the galactic core are worse but so would insolation in the wider sense: the star field would be dense enough to illuminate more than the milky way does, for us surely?
Mandatory recommendation of the Gigapixels of Andromeda [4K] [1] video/version. Especially with this particular song(!), as the 8K version [2] has a different one which doesn't really give the chills... Although, 60fps makes the image much better. Maybe combine the song from [1] with the video from [2]...
The source picture is the 1.5 gigapixels version (69.536 x 22.230 pixels).
Fun fact: watching the video on certain TV's makes them flicker wildly. Probably because they struggle with many dots in motion. On a monitor it works flawlessly.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9bNqBeAtC8