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46-Billion-Pixel Milky Way Photo is Largest Astronomical Image of All Time

posted by martyb on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-at-the-big-picture dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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

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  • (Score: 2) by unzombied on Friday October 23 2015, @06:56PM

    by unzombied (4572) on Friday October 23 2015, @06:56PM (#253704)
    Yeah, one of those pet peeve things. Another way to look at it is some headlines and even articles presume an informed or sophisticated reader. Like "earliest homo sapiens remains found" means "earliest so far." The opposite is equally annoying, for example "earliest life 4.1 billion years ago" presumes on this planet, or "in the known universe" can make you wonder about the "unknown universe." [sarcasm]Why aren't astronomers investigating that?[/sarcasm]
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