As far back as I can remember I have looked up into the sky at night, forming constellations in my mind, imagining how many stars there are in the Universe, and what could be out there. There are so many stars in our own galaxy alone! And to think there are so many innumerable galaxies in the Universe! The closest galaxy to the Milky Way, our own galaxy, is Andromeda, at only some 26 light-years from us. Scientists have figured out that it is on a collision course with the Milky Way, and will smash into it in some 5 billion years. Thankfully neither we or our grandchildren will be around to see that, although, I quite think it might be a show worth seeing! But then again, a recent paper suggests that the great extinction that occurred before the Dinosaurs dominated the Earth could have been caused by a methane burp from the bottom of the oceans, a burp caused by perhaps the volcanic activity of the time, so with life getting wiped out so easily, I wonder if anyone could survive for long in a galactic collision?
A few days ago I used Google Earth’s star chart to find Andromeda’s point in the sky, then the night before last I took my camera outside to try to photograph the Milky Way for the first time. I got some good shots, and was happy with them.
Mind you that’s an airplane, not a UFO!
So these were making me pretty happy, so I put on the 35mm lens and pointed towards where I thought Andromeda was, and got this photo.
Of course, I couldn’t have been happier than to have caught her in the first photo! So I got the 50mm lens (because it is one fast lens), and shot a series of photos of Andromeda. I could bore you with those, but I did get one that was of particular interest that I corrected the blackness of in Photoshop and cropped for a much closer view. The result was this image:
If you look close, I actually caught two shooting stars in this photo. That was more than exciting! To have caught Andromeda for the first time, AND to have got two shooting stars in the same image made my night! It reminded me of 1990 when the inner planets lined up, and the moon was in the same kind of close view, and I was looking up at them and saw a shooting star race right through the view. I had wished I had a camera then to take a photo, so I finally sort of made up for it!
The blur in this photo is caused by the rotation of the earth. That’s why the stars blur, and the shooting stars don’t. I shot at a very high ISO (hence the noise), and only kept the shutter open for 20.7 seconds (ISO 3200, f/2). Still, the rotation of the Earth caused this much blur.
One last note, I have an f/1.8 lens, but try to stay at f/2.4 or higher usually because lenses don’t perform well within two stops of the end of the range, so an f/1.8 is not as clear at f/1.8 or f/2 as it is at f/2.4. The lens is fuzzy at those two f/stops.
I did put this last photo on Facebook and got a lot of great feedback! I want to say thanks to everyone who took the time to look at it, and leave the feedback! It was wonderful to make the photo, and I am so glad you all enjoyed it! It is good to put a smile on people’s faces!
Kelsey J Bacon