Spitzer's 5-Gigapixel Milky Way

James Harold writes "Today NASA unveiled a new infrared mosaic of our galaxy. The result of over 800,000 individual images collected by the Spitzer Space Telescope, it is the largest, highest-resolution, and most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way (and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future). Because Spitzer sees in infrared, it penetrates much farther into the galaxy, revealing previously hidden star clusters, star-forming regions, shocked gases, glowing 'bubbles' and more. The complete mosaic is about 400,000 by 13,000 pixels, and a 180' printed version is being shown at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. A zoomable, annotated version of two different variants on the image (as well as some additional information on the science) is available at Alien Earths, a NASA- and NSF-supported education site." The Spitzer survey is already causing a stir potentially bigger than that raised when Pluto was deemed not a planet: two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.

Comments

Compression at it's finest

[nexeruza]

Wow they took a 400,000 by 13,000 pixel image and compressed it to a 200x200 jpeg to wow us net folks, stellar.

Re:Compression at it's finest

[mrbluze]

Here are some hi-res images - found them finally.

Re:Compression at it's finest

[icegreentea]

On the NASA site (first link), hit the visual button at the bottom of the screen. You'll be sent to http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/visuals.shtml

You can download 3000*2400 versions of each mosaic, or download each individual tile (16 in total) at insane resolution. Enjoy.

Re:Compression at it's finest

[pgn674]

Here's a link to the zoomable explorer mentioned in the summary: http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/

Re:Compression at it's finest

[dotancohen]

That's what I was thinking. Where's the beef? Are you kidding? I was scared to click the link to TFA thinking it might try to download to whole thing.

Re:Compression at it's finest

[tuxgeek]

Alien Earths has some pretty good images of this thing
http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/
The viewer is pretty slick

Re:Compression at it's finest

[vrmlguy]

Here is a concatenation of all the screen resolution images into a single 14400x492 image: http://samwyse.googlepages.com/ssc2008-11b_medium.jpg

BTW, I created them from the caltech screen-res images using this Python script:

from PIL import Image
full = Image.new('RGB', (16*900, 492))
for i in range(16):
        piece = Image.open('ssc2008-11b%d_medium.jpg' % (i+1))
        full.paste(piece, (i*900, 0))
full.save('ssc2008-11b_medium.jpg')

Bigger than Pluto?

[nebaz]

The average lay person is not going to care about the status of spiral arms in the galaxy. Everybody learned that Pluto was a planet in grade school. That fact gives the average person a stake in its status. When you ask about a spiral arm, you'll hear "huh?".

Link to AliensEarths, mentioned in article

[sheriff_cahill]

http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/glimpse.php and launching the viewer will bring up the zoomable image mentioned

Direct link to the huge images

[Lord Juan]

But, the images (the huge ones) are right there, here is the direct link to the huge images http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/ssc2008-11a.shtml

Of Tags and Men

[arnoldo.j.nunez]

Okay, I realize the tag says !eliot, but when the summary says: Spitzer, penetrates, revealed, and shocked, it makes me think that Slashdot is trying to embed secret messages in TFS.

deep penetration

[liquidf]

Because Spitzer sees in infrared, it penetrates much farther into the galaxy... wow, never thought i would see "Spitzer" and "penetrate" in the same sentance together and *not* be talking about a certain governor

Re:really?

[mrbluze]

You were really planning to click on a link pointing to a 20 gigabyte image? Then what?

• Start downloading
• Go out for coffee
• Start missing slashdot
• Drink more coffee
• Come home
• Cancel download
• Continue browsing/posting on slashdot.

Re:Accessibility

[wass]

I believe all NASA (and I believe US govt funded) astronomical research data that isn't classified is eventually put into the public domain. Eg, all HST data.

But every mission and every observation has a PI and a team of researchers that have proposed that project, have done a huge amount of homework on why they chose the targets they did, what they hope to observe, and how they will do analysis. The PI's of the project are thereby given exclusive access to their data for a period of time. IIRC, for Hubble it's one year.

This period of exclusivity is to allow them to get the credit for their hard work in choosing the observation, and to prevent being scooped by fellow academics. It's like a very short-lived patent of sorts.

IMHO, a period of one year for astro data is a perfectly valid way to satisfy all parties involved. It also puts pressure on the researchers to get their asses in gear and publish, before someone can get at their data. But it lets everybody else use the data for their own purposes after the expiry date.

Of course there is the question of the data storage and retrieval service, and all the calibrations that need to be done on the raw data, and the effective HOWTO procedures for such calibration. Much of this is available, and for active projects there are help desks. Eg, for each of the sensors on the HST there is a specific help desk to provide assistance explaining how to get and process the data. But for older missions, there are no funds to provide these services. But the data should be there, somewhere. But you're probably on your own to calibrate it properly (or at least find older users of said data that can help you).

Re:really?

[Hognoxious]

Next time maybe they'll take the picture during the day.