Worldwide Night Sky Stitched Together In 5 Gigapixel Image

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Worldwide Night Sky Stitched Together In 5 Gigapixel Image

Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 9, 2011 @05:28AM from the billions-and-billions-of-pixels dept.

katarn writes "Nick Risinger traveled the world, using a robotic camera mount and six air-cooled cameras, each fitted with their own lenses and filters, to capture the entire night sky in one image; the largest full true-color sky survey. The project took a year to complete, and Risinger logged 60,000 travel miles. The final image is made up of over 37,000 individual photos, has a resolution of 5,000 megapixels, and took months to piece together. Risinger says, 'Travel was necessary as capturing the full sphere of the night sky brought with it certain limitations. What might be seen in the northern hemisphere isn't always visible from the south and, likewise with the seasons, what may be overhead in the summer is below the horizon in the winter. Complicated by weather and moon cycles, this made for some narrow windows of opportunity which we chased through the remote areas of Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Colorado, California and Oregon.'"

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Full by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-09 05:36 · Score: 5, Funny

My God, it's full of stars!
1. Re:Full by somersault · 2011-05-09 06:25 · Score: 2
  
  And holy shit, what are the chances? The guy that did this study is Nick Risinger, but it also happens that his name is written over the night sky in multiple places!!!! Surely this is proof that god exists, and he's a bit strange.
  
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  which is totally what she said
2. Re:Full by buchner.johannes · 2011-05-09 16:32 · Score: 2
  
  So, where is the Earth?
  
  --
  NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Milky Way by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-09 05:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've never seen any notion of the Milky Way in the sky... how clear is it in an unpolluted area?
1. Re:Milky Way by Abstrackt · 2011-05-09 05:42 · Score: 2
  
  Where I live (middle of nowhere in Canada) it almost looks like your eyes just aren't focusing properly; it's basically a white "haze" that stretches across the sky.
  
  --
  They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
2. Re:Milky Way by Palmsie · 2011-05-09 06:04 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Where I live (middle of nowhere in Canada) it almost looks like your eyes just aren't focusing properly; it's basically a white "haze" that stretches across the sky.
  In southern California, we call that pollution.
  
  --
  Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
3. Re:Milky Way by raptor_87 · 2011-05-09 06:06 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  In an area with minimal/no light pollution, the Milky Way is about as hard to miss as the ground. It appears as a giant (10+ degree wide) ragged band with various dark spots and veins. At the right times of year/night, you can see it stretching from horizon to horizon.
  But in most towns, it's just a faint bit of paleness near the zenith. And completely invisible in even a small city.
4. Re:Milky Way by Cronock · 2011-05-09 06:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's very sad that since the dawn of man we've been able to see the night sky in all it's glory on a clear and moonless night, but in the last 120 years or so it's been reduced to just a faint glimmer of what had been. Someday, I hope that we can have one night a year with no light pollution so that we could see the full glory of what's really all around us and can be seen with a naked eye.
Amazing by MetalliQaZ · 2011-05-09 05:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's an amazing accomplishment and truly a beauty to behold. A survey of his completed image would match perfectly with a monologue from Carl Sagan. Not only does it show the elegance of a galaxy from the inside, but the views at large angles away from the galactic plane show a liberal sprinkling of alien galaxies, the inhabitants of which could scarcely care about us puny humans and our problems.
-d

--
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
1. Re:Amazing by nebaz · 2011-05-09 06:04 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  show a liberal sprinkling of alien galaxies...
  Aha! So you admit it! The liberals do want illegal aliens to live here.
  
  --
  Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
2. Re:Amazing by ChipMonk · 2011-05-09 06:12 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Salman Khan may yet do one. He did one for the Hubble image that turned up hundreds of galaxies, where we had never seen anything before.
Traveled the world!! by SpeedyDX · 2011-05-09 05:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

The world, consisting of Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Colorado, California and Oregon. To be fair, he also went to South Africa twice, but really, "traveled the world" seems to be a slight embellishment.
The accomplishment is nonetheless pretty damn impressive. I wonder how long it took to stitch all those photos together.
1. Re:Traveled the world!! by Arlet · 2011-05-09 06:34 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Nothing but places well inside the northern hemisphere?
  Such as South Africa ?
2. Re:Traveled the world!! by dogmatixpsych · 2011-05-09 07:22 · Score: 2
  
  Shhh, some people don't believe there is anything outside the U.S. We don't want to shatter their delusions on the jagged rocks of reality. ;)
WorldWide Telescope by rlseaman · 2011-05-09 07:36 · Score: 2

Very neat little project!
Once you build a digital image archive of the sky, various whole sky browsers become possible. The gold standard for such is WorldWide Telescope:
http://worldwidetelescope.org/
This permits overlaying various sky surveys at different wavelengths, not just a single picture of the sky.
The web client is very nice, but the Windows client is something else again. (This is a Microsoft Research project.) You should see it on a planetarium dome.
Google has another:
http://www.google.com/sky/ ...as well as an Google Earth based client to install.
Looks a lot like the 5 Gp Image by bobs666 · 2011-05-09 08:17 · Score: 2

You will not see all the colors, since the light in the Image was collected over time. None the less it looks just like that.

You have to go to a place without light pollution. Then you have to let your eyes acclimate in the dark for 20 to 30 minutes. Of course the quality of your eye sight will factor in.

Map of light intensity of the earth

Here is just a picture of the earth at night.
Re:Rubbish... by OrangeTide · 2011-05-09 09:33 · Score: 2

because of the lights or the cheap wine?

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire