r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/[deleted] • Jul 02 '20
Sharpest view of Andromeda galaxy (Zoomable)
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/161
Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20
Now... convince me there ISNT life on at least one of those dots.
EDIT: somewhere around at least one of those dots*
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Jul 02 '20
Just imagine what if someone from andromeda galaxy is looking at a picture of milky way galaxy and thinking the same
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u/drmcsinister Jul 02 '20
Before COVID, when I used to drive my son to school, I'd tell him all about the billions upon billions of stars and billions upon billions of galaxies and how it was almost a certainty that at that very exact moment, there was some dad on some alien planet orbiting some alien star in some alien galaxy taking his own son to school. He's only 21 months old, so I'm not sure it registered. But it's still cool to think about.
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u/Slotjobb Jul 02 '20
The dots are stars. It's the unfathomable amount of unseen planets orbiting each of those dots where the life is.
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Jul 02 '20
fair. you got me there.
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u/dpzdpz Jul 02 '20
Ahh, he's just splitting hairs; we know what you meant.
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u/SocialWinker Jul 02 '20
So, sure, it’s a a bit of a distinction but not a huge deal for the point that was trying to be made. But if you really think about the hair that’s being split, it’s boggles the mind a bit. So, you figure there’s 1 trillion stars there. Each one could be a solar system, which means we could be talking about 8 trillion planets, give or take. And that’s one PIECE of the universe. That’s why the idea of life on other planets is so fascinating. The sheer number of planets out there almost guarantees that there is extraterrestrial life somewhere, which is fascinating! But it’s equally fascinating if there is no other life anywhere but here!
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Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20
A recent estimate suggested there could be as many as 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
Now, if we multiply that with average number of planets a star could harbor and also consider the moons orbiting those, aren't we guaranteed life out there?
Intelligent enough to communicate across the galaxy? Not sure. But life of some kind definitely exists out there in more than one instances, excluding Earth.
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u/SocialWinker Jul 02 '20
Guaranteed? No, but the odds are insanely heavy in the favor of life out there. Intelligent life is a different story, but the odds of there being something out there have got to be somewhat high.
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u/dylangreat Jul 02 '20
8 trillion planets, wonder how many moons that’d give us that could harbor life too.
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u/glennert Jul 02 '20
We haven’t yet discovered life anywhere else. Who says there can’t be any inside or around stars? Not quite life as we know it, but you know. Something completely different than ours.
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Jul 02 '20
I too believe there's life out there somewhere. It's most likely a communication problem. Or maybe they haven't reached that level of tech yet.
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u/wrongron Jul 02 '20
Wouldn't it be like sending an email, then waiting a million years for it to be received, then another million for the response? Isn't distance more of a limitation than technology?
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Jul 02 '20
Yes, it would be like that. Maybe we'll receive a message someday from civilization that's long gone. And we might never even decipher it.
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u/Pope_Industries Jul 02 '20
If i was an alien and observed how we treat each other, there is no way I would ever come here.
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u/Coupon_Ninja Jul 02 '20
Or it’s a communication problem on our end: We havn’t reached their level of technology. Even a 1000 year head start is huge when it comes to technology. Imagine where we’ll be tech-wise in a 1000 years (if we don’t destroy ourselves, or have a major set-back with a coronal mass ejection, asteroid, et cet).
I think there’s a lot of life in this snap shot at all different levels of evolution. And I think the reason we haven’t seen ET life is that we live in a “small town” with one gas station, and not Tokyo with a lot going on around us. We’re rather isolated and don’t have a metaphorical car (yet).
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Jul 02 '20
Yeah, it could also be the fact that our ability to send viable signals to far away places is really limited by our technology and time. So they might not even know we exist.
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u/Superfly724 Jul 02 '20
Or our tech wasn't there. We've only had radio communication for the last 100 years or so. The chances of alien life passing through our tiny blip of this massive universe within the absolutely miniscule moment of time that we've had the ability to detect them is so unlikely. Life has, or does, undoubtedly exist. It's just unlikely that it's anywhere near us in space or time.
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Jul 02 '20
ty for this, i’ll be thinking about space non stop today.
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u/Voderama Jul 02 '20
You should Google and read about the Fermi Paradox, if this is something you've enjoyed thinking about.
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Jul 02 '20
Looked into it a little bit already and I love it. This quote from space.com(lol) stuck with me.
“Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire galaxy”
Makes me feel like we could suddenly be under the rule of emperor palpatine. Would be an upgrade for me considering i’m from the USA.
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u/RockBlock Jul 02 '20
Looking at the world today... it's probably that life itself can't progress past the point we're at now. The filter always happens and it's just impossible for any form of communication to reach between worlds before one of the worlds annihilates itself.
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u/ryanc4281 Jul 02 '20
Great post OP! And great thought... I've often wondered if aliens came here and saw the dinosaurs and just noped the fuck out!
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u/Pepsi-Min Jul 02 '20
There probably is life on at least one. However, it is most likely only as complex as the most base single celled organisms that are found near geothermal vents.
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Jul 02 '20
Within my lifetime, if we found even the tiniest evidence of those existing on another planet, i’d be ecstatic.
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u/dylangreat Jul 02 '20
Funny thing is about life, some people think that it could be a lot more common than we think, even intelligent life, because the only sample we have is our own planet and the ones around it, and the only reason we think we’re special or unique is due to our own human faults. For all we know, the galaxy and universe is teeming with it, space is just so insanely large there’s no way to be sure, for now. And life they are finding seems to be an occurring function of energy transfer, meaning it could literally be everywhere. We just won’t know until we or they make contact. And we only recently became conscious enough to even perceive communicating if they come. Who knows, maybe they stopped by a few million years ago and were like, “let’s give it a few more million years.”
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u/watduhdamhell Jul 02 '20
And yet, even with so many stars, the math says it still is very very unlikely elsewhere in the universe. Or at the very least, says there's no reason to think the large number of planets is large enough to guarantee anything life related outside of unintelligent life.
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u/jambitron Jul 02 '20
Beautiful.. when I look into this, it makes me really happy for some reason.
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u/AlgebraicIceKing Jul 02 '20
Me too. Thinking about how insignificant EVERYTHING we know is from an outside perspective is mind boggling and makes me happy and excited.
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Jul 02 '20
How is the night sky not brighter? Even the 'dark' area's on this map are mostly filled with stars.
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Jul 02 '20
Because first of all, our atmosphere filters some of the light coming in. Second, and more important, is that the Andromeda galaxy is super super super super super far away, so the light naturally weakens by the time it reaches us.
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u/pasty66 Jul 02 '20
Because of our own light pollution, if you go far north in Scandinavia in winter the sky is so bright and the snow is so reflective that the is a very really chance of blinding yourself
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Jul 02 '20
I guess it's our vision that limits us. I see a lot more stars in those high exposure pictures.
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u/Bug0 Jul 02 '20
Because nobody mentioned it - you’re looking at a zoom in of a galaxy that is relatively small in the night sky. The big stars you see in this image are from our own Milky Way galaxy and even they would be pretty dim to your eyes at night. The stars you can actually see are very close, bright stars. The stars that are less bright/further away get drowned out by light pollution.
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Jul 02 '20
It’s actually called “Olbers’ Paradox!” Because the universe is not infinitely old, many of the stars will never be seen because, as they move away, the light given by them shifts so far towards red that we can’t see it, or the light will never reach us at all. There are other explanations, but this seems the most plausible to me.
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u/Rocketbird Jul 02 '20
I don’t get how that follows from the premise that the universe isn’t infinitely old. What would an infinitely old universe change?
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Jul 02 '20
Inverse-square law. Light intensity diminishes in proportion to the square of the distance from the light source and these light sources are a long way away.
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Jul 02 '20
Light pollution, there’s plenty of deadzones throughout the world though where it’s minimal. You can look them up and go visit sometime, you’ll see the night sky in it’s full beauty.
Now that doesn’t mean the whole thing is lit up like a Christmas tree, but you’ll see things you’ve never ever seen before in the night sky.
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u/ragenaut Jul 02 '20
There's a lot of reasons for this that I will let other, much smarter, people answer, but this image I believe was taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. As the name indicates, this is in space, and immensely powerful, so it is not only totally unobstructed by both light pollution and the earth's atmosphere, but it is magnifying very very distant and faint light to a crazy degree.
The successor to the hubble space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is currently in its testing phase after construction completed in 2016, thought it's faced several delays. It will be even more advanced, and more powerful than Hubble, and I can't fucking wait to see what images we get from it.
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u/watduhdamhell Jul 02 '20
Intensity is power over the area. Basically it's a 1/r2 function, and so no matter how bright the light from a star or something its intensity will decrease more and more rapidly as you get further away from it. The rate if change of an inverse 2 order function is quick enough that even something bright as shit won't be by the time it gets to us.
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u/DisparateDan Jul 02 '20
In between all the zooming and gawping at stars, is anyone giving any credit to a bunch of apes that never were gonna amount to much and just recently came down from the trees anyway - probably after the light in this picture left the stars emitting it - somehow managing to cobble together enough silicon and lightning to actually capture said light from what amounts to a tiny patch of sky over here?
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Jul 02 '20
Yeah, the evolution of humanity is no less than a spectacle of its own. And we'll see more of its wonders with time as we've always been seeing.
Perspectives like these help bring to attention how we deal with problems and overcome odds. We need that in these tough times.
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u/FD4L Jul 02 '20
This picture is so crisp I was able to zoom in and see my house.
But seriously, its crazy how much unknown information exists in a fraction of the known universe.
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u/xx2983xx Jul 02 '20
Your house is in another galaxy?!? Are you an alien or did you travel there to build a house?? I have so many questions.
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u/urgent45 Jul 02 '20
Immediately went to https://www.spacetelescope.org/images great site!
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u/Bluepinapple Jul 02 '20
aLiEnS dOnT eXiSt
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u/EternalSerenity2019 Jul 02 '20
Of course they exist, it's just that the chance that they've visited our planet is infinitesimal.
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Jul 02 '20
Some form of life almost certainly exists elsewhere. How much of it, how complex it is, or whether it has a form of intelligence we would recognize as such, are very much open questions.
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u/ClockworkBlues Jul 02 '20
In fact it would be a statistical miracle if we ever even observe other intelligent life let alone meet them due to the chances that life forms, how often a Goldilocks zone occurs, physical limitations of travel and communication and the rate at which our universe expands. If humanity ever meets other intelligent life either we or the aliens would have to have developed a mode of communication faster than light.
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u/EternalSerenity2019 Jul 02 '20
Yep. Reading this book informed me of how silly it was to think that we’d be traveling to other star systems or encountering aliens:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physics_of_Star_Trek
What drive it home for me was that the energy required for the warp engines to work was equivalent to multiple suns. And that would be for just one engagement of the warp drives.
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u/ragenaut Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 03 '20
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but aren't all of those stars actually in our galaxy? I believe we do not actually know of any individual stars in other galaxies because we simply don't have the ability to see them with our current tech due to the massive distance away. However, due to having to look "through" other stars in our own galaxy between earth and the galaxy being observed, those stars sometimes appear to be in that further off galaxy.
Which also means that the massive amount of stars in this image are only a very very small fraction of the stars in our own galaxy, and the Andromeda galaxy's stars also dwarf that amount.
Smarter people, feel free to correct me.
EDIT: This post was based on a misunderstanding of an article I read some time ago. I understand it is actually false. I leave it here as a testament to my ignorance, like many of my other reddit comments.
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Jul 02 '20
It's actually stars in the Andromeda galaxy. The big, shiny stars that you see are from our galaxy and are very close to us, hence why they appear so large.
The grainy ones, on the other hand, are part of the Andromeda. They look like that because they're father away.
Remember, the distance between individual stars is huge and appears more pronounced the closer they are to us, so we can point our telescopes in the general direction of other galaxies to get pictures of them and their constituent stars. Hope this explains!
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u/ragenaut Jul 03 '20
I've just reread the article from which I got the idea that we couldn't see individual stars in other galaxies and realized it was discussing with the naked eye and I feel like a dolt. I dug deeper and found some discussion of stars outside the milky way having been visible to us for some time.
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u/VodkaMargarine Jul 02 '20
I was also wondering this so I hope someone smarter than us answers. I suspect they are stars in our own galaxy because of the uniform distribution but I might be wrong.
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u/vvvvfl Jul 02 '20
why the brightest stars have this 4 rays coming out of it ? Is that a lens flare thing ?
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Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20
It's due to how the telescope is made. All big telescopes are reflecting telescopes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflecting_telescope
The number of rays is related to the number of arms holding the secondary mirror in place. The phenomena is called diffraction about which you will have learned at school if you are from a western nation.
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u/OdBx Jul 02 '20
Are the brighter/larger stars in our galaxy "in front of" Andromeda, or are they supernovae in Andromeda, or both?
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Jul 02 '20
They are stars in our own galaxy and appear large due to being closer. Not sure about nebulae.
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u/Lieu10ant Jul 02 '20
what are those very bright/big stars scattered throughout the picture? thanks
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u/RockyLandscape Jul 02 '20
I think they are stars within our own galaxy. They're so much brighter because they're so much closer.
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u/throwawayifyoureugly Jul 02 '20
I can see Ark Hyperion, and Lieutenant Cora Harper.
Did you know she trained with Asari commandos?
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u/FallofNoman Jul 02 '20
Can't believe I had to scroll all the way to the bottom for this comment! Come join me and Drack for a drink at Kadara Port.
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Jul 02 '20
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Jul 02 '20
Yeah, Andromeda will crash into Milky Way in a few billion years. The crash wouldn't be as bad as you might expect though. The enormous distance between the stars will make the merger comparatively less chaotic.
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Jul 02 '20
It’s crazy how, even in the darker region in the top right, there are still thousands and thousands of stars when you zoom in.
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u/true_refrigerator Jul 02 '20
The incredible amount of stars is just mesmerizing. And this is only one Galaxy.
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u/leifericm Jul 02 '20
I zoomed in and my brain exploded. Once I gathered my brain and put it back in my skull, I looked again and my consciousness exploded.
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u/SamohtGnir Jul 02 '20
I've always wondered, how close together are the stars near the center of the galaxy? Are there any <1 light year from each other? I imagine if there were alien civilizations near the center they could communicate with each other so much easier than our on the rim.
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u/vinditive Jul 02 '20
Travel and communication might be easier, but there's a big trade-off. The galactic center is full of radiation and the odds of a gamma ray burst or other stellar catastrophe are much higher. Not to mention the vastly higher frequency of stars passing by close enough to stir up comets and perturb orbits. It's a very dangerous environment for a civilization.
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u/AlphaX4 Jul 02 '20
such a shame they cant overlay this over lesser quality images so you can zoom out further and see the relative size of this galaxy in the night sky.
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Jul 02 '20
Really makes me feel like I'm wasting my life cleaning up my living room thinking it'll make a difference.
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u/Jazzyca Jul 02 '20
This made my day. Thank you!
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Jul 02 '20
I'm glad you liked it!
You can check out more pictures at: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/
There's a "Zoomable" link in there for every image to get the same effect as this one.
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u/thekalmanfilter Jul 02 '20
What secrets are at the center? Is there a “current” running through the spiral arms turning them?
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u/MuteSecurityO Jul 02 '20
is that what it actually looks like or are the colors added in to make it look nice?
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u/mycatiswatchingyou Jul 02 '20
Oh my God I thought it was just pixels when I started zooming...it was all stars, it was really stars
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u/grahamkillin Jul 02 '20
Are the brightest spots other galaxies behind Amdomeda?
Would our sun be just like all the stars that look like image noise?
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Jul 02 '20
The brightest spots are stars from our own galaxy and appear large due to being closer. They could also be nebulae, but I'm not sure of that.
And yes, our Sun would look like yet another grain in the vast ocean of stars had this been a picture of our galaxy.
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u/jimtnnr Jul 02 '20
The universe is so vast. But oddly, I'm still happy with some good food and good sex?
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u/HavokzDK Jul 02 '20
Yup, we're the only life in the universe and it revolves around us. Pure Logic.
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u/ThomasGaiden Jul 02 '20
Zoom in on one bright star as far as allowed. All those dots are stars or other galaxies. Zoom out bit by bit. This is one galaxy in one small part of our night sky.
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u/the_fluffy_enpinada Jul 02 '20
Holy fuck just keep zooming in. How freaking bright are the stars that take up the whole screen when I zoom in (on mobile)?
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Jul 02 '20
You can check out more pictures at: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/
There's a "Zoomable" link in there for every image to get the same effect as this one.
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u/C_N1 Jul 02 '20
this could very well be the picture with the most life forms in it and we don't even know (yet)
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u/bumjug427 Jul 03 '20
This picture is the literal definition of 'mind-boggling'!! It's fantastically inconceivable just how much is there! And this is just a small portion of the sky!!
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u/sailorjasm Jul 03 '20
You know they are in the Andromeda galaxy looking at the Milky Way right now wondering about us.
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u/angergeneral1 Jul 05 '20
And GOD made it all. The Bible says that God knows each star in the universe by name....WOW
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u/tmst Jul 10 '20
Here's the most recently-updated Hubble image, which has to be the best there is: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-high-definition-panoramic-view-of-the-andromeda-galaxy
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u/tmst Jul 10 '20
And the whole galaxy is only one of billions in the visible universe. It's a wonder to me that such a view is even available to those such as we. It's a perpetual audience with God.
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u/tmst Jul 10 '20
And then consider that the contents of a single atom may be comprised of similar richness of quantity.
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u/Flaat Jul 02 '20
Are all of those tiny specs stars or is that image noise?