The All-Sky Milky Way Panorama (Version 2) is a collection of over 3,000 images that were stitched together to represent the entire galaxy as accurately as possible. This is some pretty slick stuff… especially slick when you consider all of the software used to make this work of interstellar art is open-source.
Axel Mellinger’s creation took over two years to complete, is 650 megapixels in resolution, 7.7 gigabytes in size, and is one of the snazziest space-scapes I have seen in quite a while. Even more impressive, it is possible to zoom in and out all over the high resolution version online. If you just really like the picture, you can even download a version to use as a background on your desktop.
From the All-Sky Milky Way Panorama page, the entire creative process and where the images, ideas and concepts all came from are explained. It makes for a fairly compelling read, especially when you consider this is the only contribution from an amateur astronomer on NASA’s Multiwavelength Milky Way poster. Nice job Axel!
