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.

Comments

Already slashdotted! Here's a Coral link

[Announcer]

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

Re:Already slashdotted! Here's a Coral link

[The Redster!]

M-M-M-Multi-Slashdot!

Re:Already slashdotted! Here's a Coral link

[Announcer]

It would appear that the Coral servers are acquiring bits and pieces as they are able. When I reloaded the link, I was able to see much more of the site than at first. Be patient... and try reloading in a few minutes.

It should be standard procedure when posting any article to Slashdot, to run it though Coral *FIRST*, so their servers can load and mirror everything. Then post the Coral link.

But that would be too easy.

Re:Slashdotted before the first comment?

[palegray.net]

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.

Awesome project, deceiving "resolution"

[edwebdev]

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!.

Re:Awesome project, deceiving "resolution"

[langelgjm]

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.

He used a moving equatorial mount to correct for the earth's motion.

Alternative Link [Astronomy picture of the Day]

[Anonymous Coward]

This image was also he asronomy picture of the day for Sept 26th

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090926.html

Amateur

[Master Moose]

He didn't even use de-speckle on it.

ThankYouThankYouThankYou

[T1girl]

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.

Re:ThankYouThankYouThankYou

[TheoMurpse]

I was recently at Yosemite during the Perseid meteor shower, and I got to really look at the Milky Way "scar" for the first time with my own eyes. My parents have a house in rural Texas, but the visibility was nowhere near what it was smack dab in the middle of a wide open Yosemite field at midnight.

Re:ThankYouThankYouThankYou

[dargaud]

I spent a couple years in Antarctica: clearest sky in the world by very far (see recent /. article about ridge A). When I was at Dome C, we would go lay down in the snow and watch the stars, never mind the sub -70C temperatures. The stars didn't twinkle at all (no turbulence) and appeared painted on a black ceiling. The main problem was getting back inside before you were frozen solid to the ground.

I had my own telescope, but my pitiful attempts at seeing anything were thwarted by the vexatious cold and my own incompetence at astronomy.