We have been amazed before by the quality and size of certain panoramas. The world record still rests on the beautiful Mont Blanc, and NASA broke the 600 gigapixel barrier with its lunar super-image, but now it is the turn of a group of astronomers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Their creation is a mosaic of the Milky Way that demanded five years of work and reaches a not negligible 46 gigapixels.
A scientific tool
It is not the largest image ever obtained of space, and to be honest, it is not the most revolutionary either. The images of some nebulae and stellar formations have taken our breath away (and continue to do so), but the idea here is not so much to satisfy our curiosity, but to meet specific scientific needs. The panorama that gathers us here today was created by a group of astronomers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the first public university in Germany after the Second World War. Its effective resolution is 855,000 by 54,000 pixels, and if someone tried to reproduce it using Full HD screens, they would need more than 22,000 units.
In other words, this panorama of the Milky Way has a size of 46 gigapixels. It represents half a decade of work, with a total of 194 gigabytes of data divided into 268 sections. The goal of the astronomers is to detect and study objects with a 'variable brightness'. Among these objects, stars with planets in their orbits stand out, and multiple systems with stars passing "one in front of the other". The collection of images combined with telemetry and the use of a telescope located in the Atacama Desert (Chile) has helped astronomers detect more than 50,000 variable objects so far.
With a size of 194 gigabytes, trying to download this image would be a true ordeal, both for the local Internet provider and for the computer trying to receive it. However, those responsible for the panorama have enabled a special website for the general public where we can explore every corner of it.
Official announcement: Official announcement:
Access the image: Access the image:
