Stargazing While Listening to the Audiobooks
If you ever want to get a really immersive experience while listening to the audiobooks, go stargazing. I recently took up astrophotography as a hobby and one of the things I like to do while I am out in the dark is to listen to audiobooks. I recently finished listening to the Dark Forest again and I got to say, listening to it while taking photos of galaxies millions of light years away is eerie to say the least. There are an estimated 280 billion stars in just M81 and M82 combined in this image alone after all.
Anyway, this is from last night. It is Bode's galaxy (M81) and the Cigar galaxy (M82). There are two other small galaxies in the image and as well which are part of the M81 group. The galaxies in this photo range from about 11.6-12.8 million light years away. Just a little less than 0.014% the distance of the estimated observable universe's diameter! In the foreground; however, within our galaxy you can kinda start seeing some interstellar dust called the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) that is somewhat perpendicular to the galactic plane. To see these galaxies your essentially looking through a dusty fog. Very analogous to how certain things are seen in the book.
Equipment:
Redcat51 telescope
Skywatcher EQAL-55i mount
Asi2600MC Air camera
SvBony dual band filter
12, 5 minute long exposures with stacking done in Siril, background extraction in GraXpert, and final editing with Microsoft's default photo editor.