After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

fsm said:

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

Nice!

Good effort, but I wonder why these chucklehead pop writers always assume that images like this will make us “feel small”.

They make me feel really big, for being a member of a class of animal that can see that far and understand what we’re looking at.

How long would it take to do the rest?

Big size (7023 × 1299)

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2021/03/000-GrandeMosaic120DegreesLONG.jpg

Tau.Neutrino said:

How long would it take to do the rest?

well first how much is that in steradians

SCIENCE said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

How long would it take to do the rest?

well first how much is that in steradians

It can be traversed in 12 parsecs.

Witty Rejoinder said:

SCIENCE said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

How long would it take to do the rest?

well first how much is that in steradians

It can be traversed in 12 parsecs.

fsm said:

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

Having a look at the full scale image. This can’t be right, what is touted as the full scale image is only about 7,000 pixels across.
Where is the real full scle image? (Further down page, image is claimed to be only 7,000 * 1,300 pixels).

mollwollfumble said:

fsm said:

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

Having a look at the full scale image. This can’t be right, what is touted as the full scale image is only about 7,000 pixels across.
Where is the real full scle image? (Further down page, image is claimed to be only 7,000 * 1,300 pixels).

There’s a few faces there, the most notable is the one top just right of centre.
Could be Agro.

mollwollfumble said:

fsm said:

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

Having a look at the full scale image. This can’t be right, what is touted as the full scale image is only about 7,000 pixels across.
Where is the real full scle image? (Further down page, image is claimed to be only 7,000 * 1,300 pixels).

Haven’t been able to find a site offering the full resolution, which is possibly not surprising given the size.

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

fsm said:

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Stitching the images together was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor tweaking between the frames to match color balance and light curves.

The resulting image is around 100,000 pixels across, made up of 234 individual mosaic panels, covering an area of sky 125 by 22 degrees.

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

Having a look at the full scale image. This can’t be right, what is touted as the full scale image is only about 7,000 pixels across.
Where is the real full scle image? (Further down page, image is claimed to be only 7,000 * 1,300 pixels).

Haven’t been able to find a site offering the full resolution, which is possibly not surprising given the size.

The site linked to in the OP has a link to it. the file is only 11.5 MB

VISTA

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/

This striking view of the central parts of the Milky Way was obtained with the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This huge picture is 108 200 by 81 500 pixels and contains nearly nine billion pixels. It was created by combining thousands of individual images from VISTA, taken through three different infrared filters, into a single monumental mosaic. These data form part of the VVV public survey and have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view for optical telescopes, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well in this picture.

ChrispenEvan said:

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

Having a look at the full scale image. This can’t be right, what is touted as the full scale image is only about 7,000 pixels across.
Where is the real full scle image? (Further down page, image is claimed to be only 7,000 * 1,300 pixels).

Haven’t been able to find a site offering the full resolution, which is possibly not surprising given the size.

The site linked to in the OP has a link to it. the file is only 11.5 MB

That’s the one I already linked, 7023 pixels across, not 100,000 or whatever’s being claimed.

ChrispenEvan said:

VISTA

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/

This striking view of the central parts of the Milky Way was obtained with the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This huge picture is 108 200 by 81 500 pixels and contains nearly nine billion pixels. It was created by combining thousands of individual images from VISTA, taken through three different infrared filters, into a single monumental mosaic. These data form part of the VVV public survey and have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view for optical telescopes, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well in this picture.

The zoomable version of that picture gives you what we would expect from the image discussed in the OP.

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/

Sorry, I don’t sell nor give my digital originals but I do sell museum quality photographic prints. Please send me a private message if you are interested.

which is why you won’t find a full res image.

Bubblecar said:

ChrispenEvan said:

VISTA

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/

This striking view of the central parts of the Milky Way was obtained with the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This huge picture is 108 200 by 81 500 pixels and contains nearly nine billion pixels. It was created by combining thousands of individual images from VISTA, taken through three different infrared filters, into a single monumental mosaic. These data form part of the VVV public survey and have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view for optical telescopes, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well in this picture.

The zoomable version of that picture gives you what we would expect from the image discussed in the OP.

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/

Yep, that’s nice. Not the image referred to in the OP because it’s dominantly Visual and near IR. The image referred to in the OP has almost all the stars removed to show the hydrogen gas regions.

Those big bibbles are a surprise to me.

They’re way too big to be planetary nebulae, too regular to be bubbles blown by supernovae, and way too regular to be star formation regions such as the orion nebula..

This ewe-tube not really hi-res. The scan starts 5 seconds in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2NNyFIrxAc

The photographer’s website is: https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/

It contains plenty of hi-res images of details, like this, but I don’t see any link to the full resolution full image.
The filter bands are unspecified, but in general are “Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by an ionized elements, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red, and oxygen = blue.”

Typical full resolution – detail.

Bit of the Milky Way from apod. Flaming star to SH2-282 is the Milky Way.
Orion is somewhat distored out of shape.
The one I find most mysterious is SH2-264. It’s huge, not associated with the core of the Milky Way, and why is it circular?