Largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever created...

[Tim Hole]

Don't know how many have seen this yet but its pretty radical.

What you see above is the largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever created, shot by 28-year-old amateur astrophotographer Nick Risinger using six astronomical cameras. It’s not just the view of the sky from one location, but is instead a 360-panoramic view of the sky taken by trekking 60,000 miles across the western United States and South Africa starting in March 2010. The final image is composed of 37,000 separate photographs. Check out the massive zoomable high-definition version of the photo here.

 

[Richard Foster]

Wow. Definitely worth checking out! The vastness of space and the amount of beautiful galaxies.

 

[Mark Collins]

in a word:

EPIC.

This is probably one of the greatest and most inspirational pieces of art of our time...

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

That is some ridiculous imagery. Impressive and beautiful. My new desktop background.

 

[paulherrin]

thanks for sharing, that's awesome.

 

[Jeremy_Sawatzky]

28-year-old amateur astrophotographer


LOL thats a good laugh

 

[Mike P.]

Is there an offline/downloadable version of this? Or app, maybe? (although a crappy iphone screen would suck and I don't want/have an ipad.)

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Is there an offline/downloadable version of this? Or app, maybe? (although a crappy iphone screen would suck and I don't want/have an ipad.)

I took a fullscreen screenshot on my comp. Looks great on the desktop.

 

[Mike P.]

I took a fullscreen screenshot on my comp. Looks great on the desktop.

Yeah, but it's 360deg with earth being the origin point; seems like a giant pic scaled down to flat surface would only be a lower-resolution, albeit still gorgeous, picture of milkyway's core. Great, but not as cool as just touring around our corner of the galaxy in realtime (complete with constellation overlay!)

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

It's lower resolution, but it's a gigapixel zoomable picture. Taking a fullscreen screenshot is still a great solution.

 

[Steven Caesare]

Hehe... the lens flare when you maneuver around with the sun in the frame is a cute touch. As are objects with popup descriptions that when clicked take you to the wikipedia page on them. Exrtremely well done.

-sc

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Wow. That's amazing.

 

[Erwin Vanderhoydonks]

If you want to start counting the stars...

There are more stars in the galaxy than sand grains in the dessert.
There are more atoms in a drop of water than stars in the galaxy

 

[Ivan Kovax]

Just... Awesome.

 

[Andrew Walker]

This is pretty amazing. Just gives you a little taste of the vastness of the Universe.

 

[Petr Dvorak]

And color of the universe is beige :biggrin5:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2013-the-universe-is-not-turquoise--its-beige.html

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091101.html

 

[Jason Murphy]

Beige? Does the universe know nothing about interesting interior design?

The photograph is incredible. I would love to see it printed huge and run down a city block in Manhattan or something.

 

[Bud Anderson]

Well....there went two hours. Check out the Andromeda Galaxy. It is huge.
Thanks!

 

[Paul Lee]

Yikes!!! That's so cool!