Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier’s amazing 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky is unveiled online today ~ Video
Amazing interactive 360 degree panoramic view of the entire night sky has been unveiled online today.
A new 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky was constructed from 1,200 photos by snapped by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory from viewing sites in Chile.
Stargazers can explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.
The image of the celestial sphere is the first of three high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project from ESO.
The project seeks to link the sky we can all see with the deep, ‘hidden’ cosmos that astronomers study daily.
It features include a web tool that allows users to delve into our Milky Way. Users are also able to learn about features including multi-coloured nebulae, and exploding stars, all at the click of a button.
The projection places the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image, so it’s almost as if we were viewing the Milky Way from the outside.
From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies.
The production of this image is the result of a collaboration between ESO, the French writer and astrophotographer Serge Brunier, and his fellow Frenchman Frédéric Tapissier.
Serge Brunier spent several weeks capturing the sky, during the period between August 2008 and February 2009, mostly from ESO observatories at La Silla and Paranal in Chile.
To cover the full Milky Way, Serge Brunier also made a week-long trip to La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, to photograph the northern skies. The image, now available on GigaGalaxy Zoom, is composed of almost 300 fields each individually captured by Brunier four times, adding up to almost 1,200 photos that encompass the entire night sky.
Serge Brunier said, “I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to, with its constellations, its thousands of stars, with names familiar since childhood, its myths shared by all civilisations since Homo became Sapiens.
“The image was therefore made as man sees it, with a regular digital camera under the dark skies in the Atacama Desert and on La Palma.”
The creators of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project hope that these latest efforts in bringing the night sky as observed under the best conditions on the planet to stargazers everywhere will inspire awe for the beautiful, immense Universe that we live in.
Henri Boffin said, “The vision of the IYA2009 is to help people rediscover their place in the Universe through the day, and night-time sky, and this is exactly what the GigaGalaxy Zoom project is all about.”
The second dramatic GigaGalaxy Zoom image will be revealed next week, on 21 September 2009.
800 Megapixel Panorama of Milky Way
This photo is too small to really show the amazing image in any great detail, but it is pretty impressive. The video gives a much clearer example of the images Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier captured.
I love it - it’s so beautiful, breathtaking. 
