The battle between M31 and the clouds (Andreas Zeinert)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · M 110 · M 31 · NGC 205 · NGC 224 · Part of the constellation Andromeda (And) · The star 22And · The star 82Psc · The star Mirach (βAnd) · The star δAnd · The star θAnd · The star μAnd · The star νAnd · The star πAnd · The star πCas · The star σAnd

The battle between M31 and the clouds, Andreas Zeinert

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The battle between M31 and the clouds

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The battle between M31 and the clouds

This photo is not about technical feats. It is not a masterstroke in capture or in processing. It is just an invitation to meditate about our place in the universe. A poetic glimpse about these ephemeral events in our world.

At this evening the Moon was illuminating the sky so that it was quite fatuous to consider LRGB wide fields. Nevertheless I wanted to try out my 65 mm Laowa lens on the Fuji XT30 and M31 was a nice target to get an idea about the scale of targets imaged by the gear. As I tried to shoot it, clouds were arriving. I was continuing the photo sequence and for about 20 min the clouds just stopped at the edge of the Andromeda galaxy. It was quite a Homeric battle between the huge terrestrial clouds and the tiny galaxy – or was it the other way round? Finally the clouds won, and the sky curtain closed the scenery.

In older books that I read in my childhood, one could still find the term "Andromeda nebula". It is only for one century now that we know about the real nature of these "nebulae". The Great Debate, also called the Shapley–Curtis Debate in April 1920 completely changed our view about the Universe.

I often wonder, would we have discovered all this if our planet had a permanent foggy atmosphere with no clear skies? Would we still think that our planet is the whole world ?

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Status	Advanced failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5101887
PixInsight job	GYXWI0G6R85G7M421JJ1JJBIKUUYBP9L
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	PLATE_SOLVING_IMAGE

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The battle between M31 and the clouds

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