It only took eight months for the largest panoramic image in the world to hand over the throne to a new project. Gone are the 365 gigapixels of the famous Mont Blanc, giving way to "Calblanque, La Manga, El Mar Menor y campo de golf", a work by Carlos Caravaca Escavy. The number rises to 401.72 gigapixels, and if someone tried to print it at 300 DPI, the final photo would be more than a hundred meters long.
The largest panoramic image is still the one showing the lunar surface, with a total of 681 gigapixels. That image required four years of work, stitching together frames from the camera installed on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. We know it's only a matter of time before this record is shattered, and we only need to look at the progress here on Earth. At the end of last May, we saw the spectacular panorama that Filippo Blengini took of Mont Blanc, reaching 365 gigapixels. But today, the new king of panoramas has on its side a mural that breaks the 400-gigapixel barrier.
The New Record in Detail
"Calblanque, La Manga, El Mar Menor y campo de golf" is a creation by Carlos Caravaca Escavy. The exact size is 401.72 gigapixels (1,335,000 by 300,913 pixels), and it contains 8,967 interpolated frames. If my math doesn't fail me, that would be around 45 virtual megapixels per photo, but Caravaca didn't reveal the equipment used, so we don't know precisely the original size of each frame without interpolation. Even so, the panorama gives us a gigantic amount of material to explore. At first glance, the sensation is of a very empty place, but it doesn't take long to find cars moving, and of course people, especially on the beach.
The person responsible for the panorama explains that the material was captured at 336 meters above sea level at Cabezo de la Fuente (Los Belones, Spain), and that it required a total of 735 gigabytes of space. Uploading the panorama to the Gigapan portal was especially torturous, taking 19 days and 5 hours. At least for a while, the world record for panoramas stays in Spain. Perhaps Caravaca himself will decide to break his own personal record with a new project, or something might come from elsewhere...
