APOD: The Galaxy Above (2019 Oct 15)

[APOD Robot]

The Galaxy Above

Explanation: Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images taken last month from the same location in south Brazil and with the same camera -- but a few hours apart. The person in the image -- also the astrophotographer -- has much to see in the Milky Way Galaxy above. The central band of our home Galaxy stretches diagonally up from the lower left. This band is dotted with spectacular sights including dark nebular filaments, bright blue stars, and red nebulas. Millions of fainter and redder stars fill in the deep Galactic background. To the lower right of the Milky Way are the colorful gas and dust clouds of Rho Ophiuchus, featuring the bright orange star Antares. On this night, just above and to the right of Antares was a bright planet Jupiter. The sky is so old and so familiar that humanity has formulated many stories about it, some of which inspired this very picture.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[Bayer]

It's Rho Ophiuchi

[AVAO]

Congratulation, beautiful picture!

I would be interested to know why two images had to be overlaid?
Why it was not possible at one time?

[orin stepanek]

I liked the silhouette of the man and area at pages bottom! He is dwarfed by the enormous size of the Milky Way! Nice photo!

[BillT]

Congratulation, beautiful picture!

I would be interested to know why two images had to be overlaid?
Why it was not possible at one time?

The usual reason is that the sky is imaged using a long exposure with the camera on an equatorial tracking mount. This stops the stars trailing but blurs the foreground. The foreground image is taken with the camera fixed and the sky part of the former is combined with the foreground of the latter.

[neufer]

I liked the silhouette of the man and area at pages bottom!
He is dwarfed by the enormous size of the Milky Way! Nice photo!

• Yeah...but only because they are not to scale.

[Chris Peterson]

It's Rho Ophiuchi

Could be. But doesn't have to be. It's just a convention... and it's convention that we do not need and which can be reasonably changed by simple usage. There's no rational reason to use the Latin genitive in purely English naming.

[RJN]

It's Rho Ophiuchi

OK. I sometimes get these wrong. Thanks! I made the correction on the main NASA APOD. I also corrected one other typo. (Can anyone find it?)
- RJN

[TheZuke!]

OK. I sometimes get these wrong. Thanks! I made the correction on the main NASA APOD. I also corrected one other typo. (Can anyone find it?)
- RJN

My guess...
instead of "The Galaxy Above",
because the photos were taken in south Brazil, it is The Galaxy Below.
B^)

[neufer]

It's Rho Ophiuchi

OK. I sometimes get these wrong. Thanks! I made the correction on the main NASA APOD.

I also corrected one other typo. (Can anyone find it?) - RJN

a bright planet Jupiter => the bright planet Jupiter

[Ann]

OK. I sometimes get these wrong. Thanks! I made the correction on the main NASA APOD. I also corrected one other typo. (Can anyone find it?)
- RJN

My guess...
instead of "The Galaxy Above",
because the photos were taken in south Brazil, it is The Galaxy Below.
B^)

Click to view full size image

Girls contemplating their mobile phones, and maybe the Galaxy below!
Photo: I don't know.

Yeah... it's a well-known fact that people down under walk with their feet in the air!

Ann

[BDanielMayfield]

I liked the silhouette of the man and area at pages bottom!
He is dwarfed by the enormous size of the Milky Way! Nice photo!

• Yeah...but only because they are not to scale.

So here's the scale: 1 guy, approximately 175 cm, to 1 galactic bulge, approximately 1 kilo parsecs.

The bulge is only about 1.76x10^20 guys wide!

[neufer]

I liked the silhouette of the man and area at pages bottom!
He is dwarfed by the enormous size of the Milky Way! Nice photo!

• Yeah...but only because they are not to scale.

So here's the scale: 1 guy, approximately 175 cm, to 1 galactic bulge, approximately 1 kilo parsecs.

The bulge is only about 1.76x10^20 guys wide!

A 1 kpc galactic bulge, itself, is only about 1.76×10¹⁹ [KFC bulge?] guys wide!

(One parsec ~ 31×10¹² km ~310×10¹⁶ cm)

<<The Sun is 7.7–8.6 kpc from the Galactic Center. In the inner few kpc is a dense concentration of mostly old stars in a roughly spheroidal shape called the bulge. It has been proposed that the Milky Way lacks a bulge formed due to a collision and merger between previous galaxies, and that instead it only has a pseudobulge formed by its central bar. However, confusion in the literature between the (peanut shell)-shaped structure created by instabilities in the bar, versus a possible bulge with an expected half-light radius of 0.5 kpc, abound.>>

[Ann]

A 1 kpc galactic bulge, itself, is only about 1.76×10¹⁹ [KFC bulge?] guys wide!

Ann

[orin stepanek]

I liked the silhouette of the man and area at pages bottom!
He is dwarfed by the enormous size of the Milky Way! Nice photo!

• Yeah...but only because they are not to scale.

I guess that happens when liberties are taken! I wouldn't know how! Take liberties I mean!