What is a galaxy? A galaxy is an extremely large collection of millions of stars (like our sun). They are unfathomably far away from us. All the individual stars you see in these images are actually in our OWN galaxy as we look out through them.
We live in the Milkyway Galaxy. We have determined that it looks similar to other spiral-type galaxies that we can see in the sky, but we don’t actually have an image of what it looks like as a whole. It’s like trying to take a picture of your house from the INSIDE. We have a good idea, but not a full picture. It is thought to look similar to the Andromeda galaxy, the closest galaxy to us.
Amateur astrophotography images of galaxies from the Starpool observatory using DSLR, CCD, and CMOS camera and various lenses and telescopes.