Biggest space picture ever: a 46 billion megapixel view of the Milky Way
After five years of painstakingly stitching together pictures of the Milky Way, astronomers from Ruhr University Bochum have finally completed their masterpiece: the largest ever space photo. It has a whooping 46 billion megapixel and 194 GB in file size. It's so large, in fact, that the astronomers had to cut it in 268 sections for it be manageable.
After five years of painstakingly stitching together pictures of the Milky Way, astronomers from Ruhr University Bochum have finally completed their masterpiece: the largest ever space photo. It has a whooping 46 billion megapixel and 194 GB in file size. It’s so large, in fact, that the astronomers had to cut it in 268 sections for it be manageable.
A small section of the Milky Way photo showing Eta Carinae. © Lehrstuhl für Astrophysik, RUB
I know what you’re thinking: ‘where can I see it?’ Well, the astronomers graciously built a dedicated web tool which you can use to zoom in and out on different sections of your choosing, basking in the glow of distant stars or quasars. Right now, it’s a bit crowded and the server’s taking a strain, so be sure to check back if the tool isn’t loading sections properly.
Another section, this time showing the M8 nebula. © Lehrstuhl für Astrophysik, RUB
Of course, there’s much more the project than a pretty picture. Dr. Rolf Chini and colleagues first began to compile this work to map out the variable phenomena in the Milky Way, which refers to blinking stars. A change in a star’s brightness means that an object must have obscured it, like a planet. Using the telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the researchers found 50,000 objects of variable brightness previously unknown to science.
