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Worldwide Night Sky Stitched Together In 5 Gigapixel Image
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.'"
My God, it's full of stars!
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.
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.
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.