What is this??

[RyanB]

So, I was playing with my 5d Mk II at the Grand Canyon last week and decided to snap some pictures of the milky way. I'm not the best at it, but i do enjoy astrophotography (from my camera, not a telescope). I was reviewing some of the pictures I took, and there's an object (a galaxy? maybe?) in my pictures that I didn't recognize, and I wish I had seen it before so I could get a picture of it closer than 16mm!

Anyways, I circled it in the picture below. Excuse the crappy quality, I put it in paint haha. What is it? I'm just curious to know :)


http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/moejoe649/stars23.jpg

Here's another:

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/moejoe649/stars.jpg

[Canon Pete]

deff looks like a Galaxy , as to what one , err ..pass.

excellent shot as well good capture of Milky Way .

[drevilsmom]

I'm guessing Andromeda galaxy.

[R Hardman]

Yep, It's the Andromeda Galaxy or if you prefer, M31.

[slitherjef]

Yup, M31 :)
BTW, I really like that first shot! Thats a nice view indeed

[Adrena1in]

M31, yes. Always surprises people when they take wide-angle long exposures and the Great Andromeda Galaxy makes an appearance. But hey, it is apparently six times wider than the full moon!! And it may be a long way away, but it's so incredibly big that it's relatively close. I mean, imagine two frisbees flying through the air about 15 feet away from each other. If you could shrink to the size of an atom and stand on one of the frisbees, the other frisbee would be quite clearly visible, would it? ;)

[gabebalazs]

Great shot!

By the way you also faintly captured M33, Triangulum galaxy, it's fainter, towards the upper left corner. Good job :-)

[Benandbobbi]

Yep. M31. You can see it clearly with binoculars.

[bjordan]

Now when someone asks how far you can see with your lens, you can honestly answer... "well, I got a good shot from a distance of 2.5 million light years."

[dale65bama]

Did you have the camera functions set for long exposure noise reduction?

Great shots. I may try something like that when I visit by brother in TN and go out to the astronomy club's dark site on Walden Ridge far away from city lights.

Thanks,

Dale

[RyanB]

Thanks for the answers, I thought it looked like a galaxy but had no idea Andromeda would come out like that :) Good info!

These were taken at ISO 6400, I didn't have anything set for NR.

[Karl Johnston]

I can't believe thats 12800 ISO! I can't wait to get mine ! And lucky grab with that galaxy, wow!

[RyanB]

Whoops you're right Kajuah! The top one is 6400, and the bottom one is 12800. Forgot about that haha. And yeah, it's an amazing camera.