Didi i photograph a Galaxy or Saturn?

[masterg]

So i went stargazing near Hyak, Snoqualmie pass, WA last night. I had my camera pointed NE cause little cloud cover. I took a lot of photos with my Nikkor AFs-G 35mm 1.8.

When i got home i opened them up and started increasing the shadow reduction and the exposure compensation and found something interesting in one of them.


This is the Original image. Look for a faded orange/brown spec in the bottom right


Don't see it?

Increased the White Balance


Increased the Shadow Reduction:
Do you see a hazy orange brown spec in the bottom right?



Increased the Exposure Comp +1.0:
How bout now?


Do you see that hazy object? Is that a galaxy or something like saturn?



I was point E/NE and i think saturn is supposed to be south of me? So i dont know what it is

[Kingcarcas]

WA? I am so jelly

[slaveondope]

Sorry about that. I'll get out of your shot next time

[Mescalamba]

It does look like galaxy..

[masterg]

Photo-on-the-net guys says its M31/Andromeda

I am stoked!

[Mescalamba]

And lucky, hehe. Nice catch.

[1ke]

One of the nerds on this forum ought to create a starfield tracking program that identifies things like this.

[Soulburner]

It may also be a nebula. I doubt that it is a Galaxy - I don't think it would appear that large in a handheld DSLR image. Most Galaxies are extremely far away save for the ones in our local group.

If you can note the date/time/location of this image, you can do some research to find out what was in that direction at that time.

If you have an Android phone, now would be the time to download Google Sky Map

[Kallenator]

It looks exactly like a galaxy, and very similar to the one masterg mentioned a bit up, M31 "Andromeda Galaxy".
Soulburner, you can acutally see M31 with the naked eye. Its the Galaxy that is closest to our own, and it's pretty large as well.

I looked it up on Stellarium as well, everything checks out, Location, Date/Time and direction of the camera. Probably is M31.
http://www.stellarium.org/

Pic of the sky that you saw:
http://kirkedam.mine.nu/kwk/Diverse/Star%20Chart%20.jpg

It actually isn't hard to catch these objects with todays DSLR's, all you need is a decent lens and more importantly good seeing conditions.

As far as planets go, they act very differently on our skies, and usually just appear as very bright spots, Jupiter is VERY bright and large, Saturn a bit less. Mars is fairly easy to spot as it has a redish glow. And you can with a cheap telescope see details on the surface on Jupiter and count it's largest moons.

[CeSinge]

Just as a (late) comment (to kallenator), indeed it is surely Andromeda, as you said. But date/time and direction of the camera are irrelevant here. Andromeda is absolutely static compared to the other stars. You clearly see most of the W of Cassiopeia, with two stars more or less in the trees.
Good observation, anyway, because in the first pictures, I'm unable to see anything.
Saturn is much brighter, and given the magnification that you have (in the bottom pictures), you would clearly see Saturn as a round, but well defined object, not hazy as Andromeda is.

[Ket]

Well, it would stand to reason its andromeda. It and the milky way are careering toward eachother for a colossal collision in like 2 billion years or something. That means that smudge will ever-so-slightly get bigger and brighter every day.

[CeSinge]

Sorry to disappoint you, Ket, but in all likeliness, it will not even be a collossal collision... It would be if we were talking about nebulae, composed of gas or other microscopic particles. These are everywhere, so many would hit each other, generating a lot of light and other radiation (hopefully illuminated by some stars in the neighborhood so that we can see something).

In this case, we talk about galaxies, and although both contain billions of starts, these are still so far apart the the likeliness of stars hitting each other is really low. Think about the (un)likeliness that the sun hits it's neighbor stars, at about 4 light years away: it is so unlikely that it will not happen. So the reality is that both galaxies will cross each other beautifully, but only very few stars will actually collide.
Admittedly, still a nice event, if you're still around to see it...

See this one from Hubble, on Mashable.com:
http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyM...40/Hubble3.jpg

[M31]

I doubt that it is a Galaxy - I don't think it would appear that large in a handheld DSLR image. Most Galaxies are extremely far away save for the ones in our local group.

Hi M31 here, the M31 Andromeda galaxy is in our local group and that is most likely what the guy has captured IMHO, if you have very good eyesight and in a non light polluted area you can detect M31 as a slight smudge quite different from your usual star.

Nice one OP .

[M31]

Ce Singe is right too, nothing will really crash when our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy get close, the space between stars is so massive they will pass through, get drawn back again, pass through, a few will collide and eventually we will become one hugh galaxy mutually attracted by each others gravity I reckon, but don't hold your breath, we wont see a difference in the entire species of Mankind or our solar system