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Milky Way’s star fields shown in largest astronomical image ever made

Lose yourself in the glorious star fields of the Milky Way. Astronomers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have compiled the largest astronomical image ever made and released it to the general public.

The full image is a mosaic of 268 individual images. It is contained in a single data file of 194 Gigabytes. Made up of 46 billion pixels, it is so huge that the astronomers have provided an online tool to help view it.

The tool allows users to navigate around, zoom in and out, and explore the depths of space. It takes a while to load the zoomed images even with a good broadband connection but the rewards are worth it. What appear like smudges at one scale resolve into jewel-box star clusters at the deeper level.

A text box shows the coordinates of the image on display but can also be used to show specific celestial objects. For example, type in ‘Eta Carinae’ to see the explosive aftermath of this unstable star, or the Messier catalogue number (listed here) of an object in the Milky Way to be taken straight there.

The image is the result of five years monitoring the night sky using the telescope at the university’s observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The monitoring programme has allowed astronomer Moritz Hackstein and other researchers to discover 50,000 previously unknown variable celestial objects.

These variations could be the result of planets passing infant of stars or multiple star systems where stars obscure each other every now and then. They are now being studied up to understand their behaviour.

The Milky Way itself is the misty band of light that runs across the sky. It is visible from dark sites well away from street lights. In 1610, Galileo raised his newly built telescope to the sky and sparked an astronomical revolution by showing that the Milky Way was made of the combined light of many distant stars. Now you can do something similar by visiting the website and zooming in.

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Swarupa said:

a single data file of 194 Gigabytes. Made up of 46 billion pixels

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WScott said:

It is taking a long time to load but already

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Asante said:

Swarupa said:

a single data file of 194 Gigabytes. Made up of 46 billion pixels

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