Galaxy OriginsA moment, made infinite. Begin your gift

Questions

Is a Galaxy Origins artwork a real photograph of a galaxy?

Yes. Each artwork is made from a telescope survey photograph of a real catalogued galaxy: the one nearest the point directly overhead at your date, time and place. It carries a PGC catalogue number you can look up in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, and the survey that took the photograph is credited on the artwork itself.

Updated 12 November 2026.

Where the photograph comes from

The galaxy is photographed by a sky survey: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys or Pan-STARRS1, telescopes that have recorded large parts of the sky over many nights. We take the survey's frame of your galaxy and finish it in the studio, resolving and grading it for print. Its structure, orientation and scale stay the survey's own. Nothing is painted in, and if a galaxy has no usable photograph we do not put another in its place.

How to check it yourself

The artwork prints the galaxy's PGC number and its sky coordinates. Search the number in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) and the coordinates must match the ones on your wall. If they do not, you are refunded: that is why they are printed.

What it is not

It is not a Hubble photograph, not a drawing and not a picture of the night sky over your city. A galaxy like this is millions of light-years away and far too faint to see with the eye; it takes a survey telescope and long exposures to record it at all.

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Related questions

Could I see this galaxy from Dubai with my own eyes?

No. These galaxies are far too faint for the naked eye from anywhere on Earth; a survey telescope recorded them over long exposures.

Is it a Hubble photograph?

No. It comes from a ground-based sky survey that photographed this part of the sky, and that survey is named on the artwork.

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