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The Night Sky In 800 Million Pixels
An anonymous reader recommends a project carried out recently by Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier. Brunier traveled to the top of a volcano in the Canary Islands and to the Chilean desert to capture 1,200 images — each one a 6-minute exposure — of the night sky. The photos were taken between August 2008 and February 2009 and required more than 30 full nights under the stars. Tapissier then processed the images together into a single zoomable, 800-megapixel, 360-degree image of the sky in which the Earth is embedded. "It is the sky that everyone can relate to that I wanted to show — it's constellations... whose names have nourished all childhoods, it's myths and stories of gods, titans, and heroes shared by all civilisations since Homo became sapiens. The image was therefore made as man sees it, with a regular digital camera." The image is the first of three portraits produced by the European Southern Observatory's GigaGalaxy Zoom project.
I can't believe it's already been Slashdotted! I was able to grab it on Coral, so now their servers have it, and should handle the load.
Here is that Coral link to this article:
http://www.sergebrunier.com.nyud.net/gallerie/pleinciel/index-eng.html
Willie...
Here's a direct link to the full-size version of the image contained in my earlier comment: panoramic night sky view. It is indeed absolutely gorgeous.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
800 megapixels would be a very large resolution for a normal image of a simple subject like, say, a person. But when you consider that this image is covering 360 degrees of night sky, which changes nightly (constellations and planets rise and set just like the sun), the resolution is not so great. An exposure time of 6 minutes (during which everything is moving) goes to show how "blurry" even an 800 megapixel image of the night sky (an enormous subject) must be. This doesn't take anything away by the beauty of this project, but I think it's important to put sensational measurements such as "800 megapixels" in context.
On a different note:
In 2009, you photograph sky. In 2010, sky photographs YOU!.
This image was also he asronomy picture of the day for Sept 26th
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html
Yeah its called ShoopDaWhoop
Unfortunately, many hosting companies make bold claims about their capabilities without actually being able to deliver on those promises. In this case, the host appears to be ovh.com (judging by whois info on the IP), providing a dedicated server. Of course, this does leave open the possibility that the server is badly configured for traffic on this scale.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
It's full of stars.
if that's full size i got one that's bigger.
He didn't even use de-speckle on it.
. .
Most people who live in cities never get to see even a fraction of the night sky. Even thougb I live in rural Colorado where we can see the Milky Way fairly regularly, I want to thank you so much for sharing with everyone what we are missing out on, night after night. This is way better than TV.
Cheers.
Go wide. And you'll have to go much faster than you think. Play around, but IIRC with no tracking you can only reasonably get about 20 seconds out of a 50 mm (35 mm camera) lens. Faster film gets you a deeper image but more grain of course. Most constellations fit nicely in the frame from a 50 mm lens.
Unfortunately, you won't get anything like this with film, at least not without an incredible amount of work and some really excellent tracking. Film rules for long exposures but digital is unbeatable for deep work because you can stack shorter exposures.
Since you're using film, consider exploiting it's strengths and get some star trail shots.
1) It's been years since I did any work with film, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. I've just got a DSLR that I use now.
2) ~20 seconds. If you go very far beyond that, you'll end up with trails instead of nice clear shots. 30 seconds is passable, you'll just end up with tiny, tiny trails - probably not that noticeable unless you look closely. You may be able to stretch that out a bit more if you have near-superhuman vision, a geared tripod, and a steady hand, but I wouldn't count on it. That's not a bad thing though, there are some great images done that show the movement of the stars. Not every picture has to be tracked in order to be worthwhile.
3) Personal preference. I've taken some pictures at 18mm that I loved, and some at 200mm that made me just as happy. Experiment, and see what turns out catching your eye. Everyone has a different sense of aesthetics. What works for me may not work for you.
For any pictures you do take, I highly recommend the Astrometry group on Flikr. It's a bot that will match up your images with a massive database covering the night sky, and tag major features in your images for you. I certainly don't know everything in the sky I'm looking at when I decide to take a picture, so being able to upload it and have all the major features identified is incredible. In my experience, the people behind it are great as well, and very willing to share the datasets they use.
That said, if you want to get serious about it, you should look at picking up an equatorial mount. It's high on my list, right after a nice intervalometer.
You can't actually see the 800-megapixel image. You have to contact the photographer to get the full-resolution image
They have a couple of decent sized static images, some desktop sizes, and one that dynamically loads when you zoom in, ala google maps. I don't know if the last one goes to the full 800MP when you zoom.
You can't get it anywhere except the artist. I set him an email, and he sent a very prompt reply that it's for profesional use only, without actually knowing wether or not I was a professional.
I'm guessing that even though this project, GigaGalaxy Zoom, is done by the ESO, a intergovernmental organization, the image is just under license from the "artist" (in this case, "man with too much time for tedium"), so don't hold your breath about finding it anyway.