Have you ever thought to yourself, “Okay, I wish I could feel extremely small and awful at the moment”? Do we ever have the solution for you!
After more than a decade of careful work, Finnish astrophotographer JP Metsavainio has absolutely released a 1.7 gigapixel mosaic of the Milky Way aircraft.
Metsavainio has been publishing his astrophotography online since 2007, but his work on the mosaic began in 2009 with the photographing of various nebulae around the Milky Way as independent compositions.
The total exposure time between 2009 and 2021 is approximately 1,250 hours. (Around the full image in its glory of 11.5 MB, click here.)
(© JP Metsavainio)
“It took almost twelve years to finalize this mosaic image,” Metsavainio wrote on his blog, Astro Anarchy.
“The reason for a long time, of course, is the size of the mosaic and the fact that the image is very deep. Another reason is that I shot most mosaic frames as individual compositions and published them as independent works of art.
“It results in a kind of intricate imagery that partially overlaps with many unimagined areas between and around frames. I shot the missing data over the years and last year I was able to publish many submosaic images once I got them ready.”
Stitching the images together was to fit stars and cover them in Photoshop, with small adjustments between the frames to match color balance and light curves, he explained.
The resulting image is approximately 100,000 pixels wide, consisting of 234 individual mosaic panels covering an area of 125 by 22 degrees.
(© JP Metsavainio)
It is a significant part of the galactic plane, with about 20 million stars, and the color image color image of 7,000 by 1,300 pixels is truly jawbone. The colors you see represent the emission of ionized elements; hydrogen is shown in green, sulfur in red and oxygen in blue.
“I think this is the first image the Milky Way ever shows in this resolution and depth in all three color channels,” Metsavainio told photography website PetaPixel.
(© JP Metsavainio)
It offers a beautiful, dazzling view of our home system, and one we can not help but get lost. If you are not sure where to start, or want to know more about what you are looking for, Metsavainio has posted a series of mosaic frames on his blog, showcasing individual nebulae.
We can also wholeheartedly recommend visiting his portfolio to make an awesome walk through his work. Especially his 3D animations of nebulae will absolutely fill you fernweh for interstellar space travel.