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NASA's Spitzer Team Releases Highest-resolution View of the Full Galactic Plane

Posted by samzenpus on from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-screen dept.

StartsWithABang writes From our vantage point within the Milky Way, most of our 200-400 billion stars are obscured by the dust lanes present within. But thanks to its views in infrared light, the Spitzer Space Telescope can glimpse not only all of the stars and the dust simultaneously, it can do it at an alarming resolution. Recently, NASA has put together a 360 panorama of more than 2,000,000 Spitzer images taken from 2003-2014, and one astrophysicist has gone and stitched them together into a single, 180,000-pixel-long viewable experience that shows less than 3% of the sky, but nearly 50% of its stars.

24 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Galactic Plane? by Tablizer · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Airplanes that can travel around the galaxy? Wow! Fast progress. How about a Galactic Boat now. And where's my flying car!

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Galactic Plane? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

    2. Re:Galactic Plane? by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      Is it just me or has affected ignorance become fashionable of late?

      I blame Beta.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:Galactic Plane? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Alarming resolution? by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Whoa dude check out the alarming resolution on my new iPhone.

    1. Re:Alarming resolution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The privacy of the stars is alarmingly threatened! Perhaps the government has finally over-reached its monitoring activities.

  3. Stars? What Stars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've lived all my life in a city. I see up to 5 dim dots in the sky on a good night. Nothing as impressive as they show there.

    Gotta hate light pollution.

    1. Re:Stars? What Stars? by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 2

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

  4. Yay linkspam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    still same unreadable website.

  5. Torrent? by thebes · · Score: 1

    Where is the torrent?

  6. Low res by ubergeek65536 · · Score: 1

    From the article. "and it’s a 180,000 pixel spectacular." Oooo. That's less than 1 megapixel. I think they meant 180,000 pixels wide.

    1. Re:Low res by hendrikboom · · Score: 1

      Or long?

  7. Alarming resolution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You fail at adjectives.

  8. oh wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    fuck medium.com

  9. Constellations by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It would help if they would identify which constellation you are viewing as you pan the image. Then you could put it into a better frame of reference as we see it in the sky.

  10. Actual link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is the real link.

    1. Re:Actual link by kosh271 · · Score: 4, Informative

      And the page with download links for the full-res images (468M-1.38G in size)
      http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu...

  11. 50% of the stars in the sky? by thisisauniqueid · · Score: 1

    Not likely.

  12. Re:Seen it before, but not meh, definitely not meh by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Sorry wrong thread. Please mod it down. Thankx

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  13. Medium.com schill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anther post from "starts with a bang" a schill for medium.com

  14. 2 things by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, instead of linking a page that gives you eye strain and is generally a boil on the ass of the internet, please link to the actual source, as has been pointed out before.

    And second, I think this link (the one mentioned above, not the one in TFS) should go to as many leaders of state as possible, just to help them put their own imagined importance into perspective.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:2 things by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Because doing so earns him an entry in my "blocked webpages" list.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  15. I wanted a new desktop background ... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2

    I now have it; but I am now looking for a monitor that is wide enough ...

  16. of all those billions and billions by k6mfw · · Score: 1

    there must be a planet of various creatures doing various things like goofing off on forums while at work.

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    mfwright@batnet.com