Galaxies…the islands of the Universe.
They are the furthest objects in the Cosmos that you can either see at the eyepiece or photograph. And normally, except for some very few cases (Andromeda Galaxy, the Magellan clouds, and our own Milky Way), you cannot observe or image such objects without the “right” instruments (large diameter scopes on good tracking mounts and high tech imaging sensors).
Well, technology has advanced so much in the last few years that you can glimpse the island of the Universe with a relative simple and highly portable setup.
This is the case with the following image, acquired by my wife and processed by myself. The setup included a small 100mm lens and a Canon DSLR camera (quite old actually). These were mounted on the very small and thus portable mount Star Adventurer from SkyWacther. The whole setup is light enough to be carried around and assembled by a pregnant woman đŸ™‚
With the right alignment procedure this mount allows for shots of up to 3 minutes with a 100mm lens to be acquired, with pinpoint stars.
Of course some manual dithering is required to get good shots, and my wife did this perfectly, despite the fine requirements of such a procedure.
So, the shot now, which shows the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, with Markarian’s Chain, and a lot more galaxies all around; please zoom in đŸ˜‰
And the color version:
maximus photography 