Serious question, why does every newbie call every nebula a galaxy?

I was at a meetup last week and this guy pointed at a photo of the Orion Nebula and said 'great galaxy shot.' I get it, they look similar on small screens, but it's messing with the comments section. Anyone else notice this or am I the only one who cares?

2 comments

2 Comments

sanchez.mia8d agoMost Upvoted

Blame the phone screens, most people can barely tell a blurry smudge from a cat picture, so calling it a galaxy is just the default guess. You gotta admit, half the fun is watching the comments explode when someone gets it wrong, right?

spencer_ross8d ago

@sanchez.mia you hit the nail on the head about the phone screens being terrible. What worked for me was just zooming in like crazy on my laptop before I say anything. Saved me more than a few times from looking dumb when I thought a weird nebula was actually a close up of someone's moldy bread. Honestly, the back and forth in the comments when someone confidently mislabels a thing is half the reason I even scroll through these posts. Learned my lesson the hard way after calling some gas cloud a "splash of paint.