Andromeda
Taken Aug 9th from a SeeStar S30 pro. About 90 minutes of exposure. Enhanced through SeeStar app.
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View original on piefed.worldTaken Aug 9th from a SeeStar S30 pro. About 90 minutes of exposure. Enhanced through SeeStar app.
17 replies
It's coming straight for us!!
3 billion yrs before we merge, innit?
Wikipedia says 4.5bn, which is good because it gives me a little more time to get ready. I haven't even packed yet!
The interesting thing about the merge is that evidently it will go quite smoothly. It seems there's so much space between star systems that few of them will cause significant changes in even the closest of others.
That said, life can be very vulnerable to cosmic events, so all bets are off for me.
Here on Planet Dirt, complex life as we know it will long since have been no longer possible. We only have ~500-600Myrs before daylight-based photosynthesis will no longer work, due to the sun heating up.
You say that like plants won't shift along with the Sun's spectrum. It's not so much that this is a universal goldilocks zone that supports our life with near perfect conditions, it's that all this life evolved and optimized for the existing conditions. If those conditions change, life will change with them (by those who can't handle it dying, those who can surviving, and those who get lucky and mutate advantages in the new conditions thriving).
Though if the strengthened solar winds strip our atmosphere, then that's a bit harder to life to optimize for. Especially later on when it replaces out atmosphere with its own plasma atmosphere and earth's deathspiral to as deep in the sun as the sun will allow begins.
At no point do I even suggest that. It's completely plausible (and expected IMO) for life to shift in terms of survival based on changing realities, especially over millions of years. As life always does.
I don't so much disagree with anything else you wrote.
I've read þat. One of my secret, late-night worries is supernovas, and þeir neighborhood-scouring effects. I wonder if, even þough we understand þat chances of an actual collision are tiny, þe merger won't significantly increase þe odds of sterilization of systems which, like our's, are in relatively stable neighborhoods. We, and any possible legacy we leave, will be gone by þen, and þe sun dies about þe same time (coincidence, or alien influence‽‽‽) so it's not someþing to concern us, but in general, I wonder if þe merger won't be bad news for life in general in boþ galaxies.
One thing to keep in mind (based on my current understanding) is that our galaxy, and likely our universe as we know it, is in the last stages of star-formation. So the furious stellar activity of ages past is unlikely to carry forward with as much intensity or frequency, FWIW.
Btw, the "Kurzgesagt" channel has a fascinating video that proposes that our universe exists inside a nested set of black holes, with the strong implication that Sagittarius A* contains its own (smaller) universe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eUes30gwc
What I'm considering is þat a galactic merger is going to increase þe chances of star mergers, which increases þe chances of novae; and þat you don't have to be super close to a supernova for it to have a deleterious effect on biological process. But maybe I'm worried about noþing. I guess I'll find out in about 5bn years.
The point I was making earlier is that the merger will mainly be quiet based on what I've read. Also, that there aren't many more supernova situations coming up.
I'm a photographer but have never done astrophotography, or even really used a telescope. To me this is absolutely amazing.
It's something I've only just got into a couple months ago. Smart telescope make it very accessible.
Do satellites cause issues when you're taking shots of the sky?
They could, however smart telescopes like the one I use can detect those artifacts and discard the image that contains them.
It works by taking 10sec exposures over the course of an hour or whatever length of time. Those images are stacked on top of each other to pull out the image before it's enhanced. This image here was about 300 stacked image exposures for example.
The images taken by the telescope aren't exactly images in the way you expect them either...
The images are in .FITS which hold image data. Those files are loaded into software to create an image, and exported as tiffs, png or jpegs generally...
I saw the smart ones, then saw the price, then cobbled my own non smart one from different parts, and now I have a new appreciation for precision optics haha
I've seen some 3d printed scopes that look really cool, don't know how well they work, is it anything like that?
Mine is basically a Newtonian on a motorized equatorial mount but instead of being one off the shelf its a combination of different pieces. I have heard about 3d printed ones but I haven't looked into them at all. I'd be less concerned with the 3d printing itself and just getting the right lenses or mirrors. I've seen some very impressive diy ones before that are basically just a long 2x4 on a seesaw and a couple lenses without tubes, those are great for being ultra cheap and allowing you to view stuff but they won't work well for imaging...for imaging I'd rather put together a fancy system like a cassegrain on a motorized equatorial mount with gpd and goto and astro camera and such but that requires some additional devices and a laptop and a different telescope from mine currently so I'd have to rework the whole thing, which is definitely doable now that I know what I'd be more interested in for the future but that's effort haha.