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  • 2016-05-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Photograph 'Taken Without a Telescope' Shows Andromeda Galaxy Next to the Moon (en)
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  • An image purportedly showing the Andromeda Galaxy next to the moon circulated in May 2016, along with the claim that it was taken from Finland and without the aid of a telescope. However, this picture is actually a composite of two separate images, and the Andromeda Galaxy appears far smaller in the night sky to the naked eye — almost identical to a garden-variety, somewhat fuzzy star, as this photograph illustrates (the galaxy is in the top center): In May 2012, NASA released a new image of what it called The Galaxy Next Door taken by an orbiting ultraviolet space telescope called the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX for short: In 2015, Reddit user Tom Buckley took the GALEX image and added it into a photograph of the moon that had been taken by Flickr user Stephen Rahn. Buckley said that his composite showed Andromeda's actual size if it was brighter: Buckley's image caught the eye of a few scientists when it first circulated in February 2015. Canadian astronomer Alan McConnachie told IFL Science that it is largely accurate: While Buckley provided the source images when he first shared his composite, and while the image circulated along with an explanation in 2015, some only encountered the picture when it was attached to the erroneous claim that it was a real photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy and the moon. (en)
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