Imagine....

[Mark2022]

First, I apologise if I have posted this in the wrong forum. I looked through them all and this seemed to just be the right one.

I took a series of shots of Andromeda a couple of months back and, on  the 12th of this month, I took a wide shot of the moon and Jupiter with my DSLR just after taking some Jupiter and moon captures with my OSC.

This composite demonstrates, fairly closely I think, how Andromeda would look in relation to the moon and Jupiter IF it were bright enough  that we could view the entire galaxy in our night sky just with the naked eye. Imagine how awe inspiring that would be seeing this in the night sky. It would feel so exceptionally close almost as if you could reach out and touch it. Yet, that is what is in our sky, just too faint, unfortunately. 

Then again, if all the large extended objects could  be viewed with the naked eye, I guess it would remove the awe inspiring results we get from finding and shooting them. Still... amazing to think it really is there and that huge. Again, I estimated so I may have somewhat overestimated.

[andrew s]

I rather like that. A bit less exposure on the moon, so it showed some detail, and it would have been even better. 

Regards Andrew 

Edited September 19, 2023 by andrew s

[Mark2022]

23 minutes ago, andrew s said:

I rather like that. A bit less exposure on the moon, so it showed some detail, and it would have been even better. 

Regards Andrew 

Less exposure on the moon would have had Jupiter and the stars all but disappear though.

[andrew s]

1 minute ago, Mark2022 said:

Less exposure on the moon would have had Jupiter and the stars all but disappear though.

Another layer ? I still like it though. Regards Andrew 

Edited September 19, 2023 by andrew s

[Mark2022]

2 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Another layer ? I still like it though. Regards Andrew 

Never thought of trying but, even then, I'm still trying to get my head around layers and masks etc.

[Clarkey]

If everything was this bright we wouldn't worry about all the light pollution. Not sure we would even need lights🤣

[vlaiv]

I'm not sure above rendition is correct in terms of size.

Moon is half a degree, and Andromeda has 3 degrees on full extent, so you can fit about 6 full moons in Andromeda from end to end.

It looks like the Moon is a bit small in your composite image?

Here - look at the size comparison from Stellarium (crude composite :D)

Moon just about fits between M31 and M110 cores.

In your image, you can fit x2 Moon between cores - so the Moon is about the half of the size it should be.

[Mark2022]

You're probably right, Vlaiv. I threw it together as a rough estimation. I  didn't check anything.