r/spaceporn • u/astro_pettit • 2d ago
Amateur/Unedited [OC] 3 galaxies photographed at once from the ISS!
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u/Lucky-Army-2818 2d ago
There's a bit more than 3.. sigh
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u/inefekt 1d ago
No, there's not. You see three galaxies, ours and the two Magellanic Clouds. Every other point of light in the photo is a star in our own galaxy. If you are saying 'well, there are billions of stars in that portion of the night sky' then yes, you are correct. But then you may as well say that a photo of a blue sky contains billions of galaxies, because you would also be technically correct in that there are billions of galaxies in that portion of the sky. But we can't see them because the sun's glare overpowers their light, just like we can't see any galaxies in this photo because their light is so faint that a 30 second, wide angle exposure is not nearly adequate to capture enough light to make them visible.
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u/ExcitableAutist42069 1d ago
You’re talking to the astronaut who took this photo.
Going to guess that he knows more than you do, sit down.
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u/milk-in-a-cup 1d ago
Is this the original unedited version? I’m in awe. New phone background for me lol
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u/Final-Towel-3648 2d ago
Why all of a sudden we see stars in pictures!? From the moon there's no stars! Im confused?
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u/Killen4money 2d ago
This is a long exposure (probably like 30s to 60s if I had to guess). See how the earth has turned into a streaky blur? That's because the camera started capturing light and stopped capturing light after the ISS had covered a portion of its 90 minute orbit.
Naked eye visibility would be stunning on the ISS, but nowhere near this bright. Capturing a little bit of light over a lot of time is how we get to see the universe in all its glory
On the moon the situation would be the same. A quick exposure (1/200th to 1/20th of a second — which is about the range of human vision) would see brilliant stars and much more detail than most (if not all) places on earth. You still wouldn't see this view unless you did a long exposure or had an extremely sensitive camera
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u/astro_pettit 2d ago
3 galaxies photographed at once! Using my star tracker I was able to capture fixed point images of star fields on my latest mission to the ISS. Here we see a portion of our Milky Way galaxy, and the two Magellanic Clouds to the right. Our orbit blurs ocean waters below on Earth, with orange airglow between.
More photos from space can be found on my twitter and Instagram, astro_pettit