Andromeda Galaxy photographed from Malmö
55.6050° N · 13.0038° E · Malmö

From one rooftop
to deep space

Every photograph began at the same point on Earth. Follow the telescope from Malmö, through the local night sky, to light that crossed thousands—or millions—of years to reach us.

  1. 01 Earth
  2. 02 Malmö sky
  3. 03 Light travel
One observing point · twelve destinations

Begin on Earth.
Then change scale.

The globe shows the real observing origin. The compass records where the telescope pointed. The route uses a logarithmic scale, because a linear one would crush every Milky Way target into a single pixel beside Andromeda.

Choose a destination

Nearest to farthest · swipe to explore
01 · OriginDrag to rotate
Malmö55.6050° N · 13.0038° E

Västra Hamnen, Sweden. All twelve targets were photographed here with a Seestar S50. Earth texture: NASA Blue Marble.

The light began its journey long before it reached the telescope in Malmö.

02 · Local sky

Where the telescope pointed

The edge is Malmö's horizon; the centre is directly overhead. Each marker uses the target's altitude and compass direction at its recorded capture time.

Selected direction
Reading the plotHorizon → zenith
Photographed targets plotted by altitude and compass direction above Malmö.NESW0°30°60°90°
03 · Light travel

A journey measured in years

Equal spacing represents a tenfold increase. This keeps nearby nebulae readable while making the extraordinary leap from our galaxy to Andromeda truthful.

Before the light-years

The planets as a ruler

Sun-centred average orbital distance gives a stable scale from Mercury to Neptune. It is not the changing distance from Earth to each planet.

Planet spacing is logarithmic, just like the deep-space scale below. Light reaches Neptune's average orbit in about 4 hours 12 minutes; the nearest photograph below began its journey more than a millennium ago.

1,000 light-yearsApproximate literature distances · logarithmic scale3 million light-years
Inside the Milky Way
Beyond our galaxy
1K
10K
100K
1M

The marker shows how long the selected target's light travelled before arriving at the telescope—not how far the telescope itself travelled.

Data notes. Coordinates and published distance measurements come from the SIMBAD astronomical database, operated by CDS, Strasbourg. The shared Veil Nebula distance uses ESA/Hubble's 2,400 light-year estimate. Planetary mean orbital distances and light times use NASA's Solar System reference tables. Values are rounded for comparison; published distance estimates vary. Altitude and azimuth are precomputed for Malmö at each recorded observation time. The Earth texture is NASA's Next Generation Blue Marble.