It takes a photographer 12 years to expose a photo of the Milky Way

Illustration of the article — Image: Astro anarchy (Others)

The following image may be the ultimate desktop background. This is no less. Finnish astronomer JP Metsavaini spent 12 years displaying our remarkable snapshot Galaxy. An image of 1,7 gigapixels It has a cumulative exposure time of 1250 hours.

Metswainio reportedly started filming the project in 2009. For the next 12 years, he focused on various areas and objects in the Milky Way, depicting mosaics as individual works of art. To complete the overall high resolution view of the Milky Way, man set out to fill gaps beyond his reach. Works of art Originals.

As he told the web Petapixel:

I believe this is the first film to show the Milky Way in all three color channels (Ha, S-II and O-III) at this resolution and depth.

The The astronomer estimates that the image is 100,000 pixels wide and has 234 individual stitching panels, and that the snapshot extends 125 degrees across the sky from Taurus to Cygnus and shows 20 million visible stars. Here To view the image in full resolution):

Not defined — Image: Astro anarchy (Others)

My rendering workflow is very consistent, so very little adjustment between mosaic frames is required. Total exposure time is over 1250 hours. Some frames have more exposure time than others.

G / O Media may receive a commission

As it is explained On his blog, Astro anarchy, This mosaic took about twelve years to complete. the reason?

Naturally for a long time the reason was the size of the mosaic and the depth of the image. Another reason is that I photographed most of the mosaic frames as individual works and posted them as free works of art. This leads to a kind of complex image set that partially overlaps between the frames and the many non-image areas around it. I photographed data that had been missing from time to time over the years, and I was able to post a lot of sub mosaic pictures since I first made it last year.

He also explains that adding images together with small adjustments between frames to match the color balance and light curves is something that overlaps in Photoshop.

In total, it contains about 20 million stars, and a full-size color image It measures 7,000 to 1,300 pixels. Amazing view of our home galaxy, which we can not help and lose.