Mar 22, 2021 20:00:00

The 1.7 gigapixel 'Milky Way' shot over 12 years is now available

Since the light of stars far away is faint, when shooting a starry sky,

a technique called 'long exposure ' is often used to capture a lot of light by lengthening the time the camera shutter is open. A photograph of the Milky Way over the night sky, taken over 12 years with a total exposure time of 1250 hours, has been released on the Internet.

Astro Anarchy: Milky Way, 12 years, 1250 hours of exposures and 125 x 22 degrees of sky
https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2021/03/gigapixel-mosaic-of-milky-way-1250.html

Finnish astrophotographer JP Metsavainio has posted a photo of the Milky Way taken during the 12 years from 2009 to 2021 on his blog.

'The first reason it took so long was the size and'depth'of each image,' Metsavainio said of how to photograph the Milky Way. Another reason is that each image is individually composed. This is because I shot it in and announced it as an independent art work. When I stitched these photos together, the stars in the picture sometimes overlapped and sometimes blanks occurred, so I need to shoot to make up for the blanks. Then, after overlaying those photos in Photoshop, I adjusted the color balance and light curve. '

A total of about 20 million celestial bodies are contained in the Milky Way photograph, which is a combination of 234 mosaic photographs taken over a total exposure time of more than 1250 hours. One of them, the

Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) , is summarized in the following blog post.

Astro Anarchy: The Tulip nebula in cygnus, Sh2-101
https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-tulip-nebula-in-cygnus-sh2-101.html

It is said that 'SNR G65.3 + 5.7 ', which is said to be the wreckage of a supernova, is also shown.

Astro Anarchy: G65.3 + 5.7, large supernova remnant in Cygnus, project continues
https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2020/11/g65357-large-supernova-remnant-in_22.html

Metsavainio's photos can be purchased from

this link.

The observatory at home that Metsavainio used for photography looks like this.

by JP Metsavainio