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Astronomers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have compiled the largest astronomical image to date. The picture of the Milky Way contains 46 billion pixels. In order to view it, researchers headed by Prof Dr Rolf Chini from the Chair of Astrophysics have provided an online tool ( http://gds.astro.rub.de/ ). The image contains data gathered in astronomical observations over a period of five years.
Using the online tool, any interested person can view the complete ribbon of the Milky Way at a glance, or zoom in and inspect specific areas. An input window, which provides the position of the displayed image section, can be used to search for specific objects. If the user types in "Eta Carinae", for example, the tool moves to the respective star; the search term "M8" leads to the lagoon nebula.
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-milky-photo-billion-pixels-largest.html
[Abstract]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asna.201211717/abstract
[Source]: http://rubin.rub.de/en/largest-astronomical-image-all-time
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday October 23 2015, @08:39AM
Google Earth has this Sky button where this data could be put right away. It would be much more fun to browse. I think 46 billion is easily dwarfed by the data for the satellite view of any major mapping service by several orders of magnitude.