Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gosh, I really wish I could feel extremely small and in awe now”? Do we ever have the solution for you!
After more than a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer JP Metsavainio has released an absolutely stunning 1.7 gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way.
Metsavainio has been publishing his astrophotography online since 2007, but his work on the mosaic began in 2009, photographing various nebulae around the Milky Way as independent compositions.
The total exposure time between 2009 and 2021 is approximately 1,250 hours. (To full image in its 11.5 MB glory, click here.)
(© JP Metsavainio)
“It took nearly twelve years to complete this mosaic image,” Metsavainio wrote on his blog, Astro Anarchy.
“The reason for a long period is of course the size of the mosaic and the fact that the image is very deep. Another reason is that I have created most of the mosaic frames as individual compositions and published them as independent works of art.
“That leads to a sort of complex image set that partially overlaps with many unimaged areas between and around frames. I’ve shot the missing data every now and then over the years and last year I was able to publish a lot of sub-mosaic images as I have. prepared them first. “
Merging the images was a matter of matching stars and overlaying them in Photoshop, with minor adjustments between the frames to match the color balance and light curves, he explained.
The resulting image is approximately 100,000 pixels wide and consists of 234 individual mosaic panels covering a 125 by 22 degree sky area.
(© JP Metsavainio)
That’s a significant portion of the galactic plane, including about 20 million stars, and the full-size color image of 7,000 by 1,300 pixels is truly breathtaking. The colors you see represent the emission of ionized elements; hydrogen is shown in green, sulfur in red and oxygen in blue.
“I think this is the first image to ever show the Milky Way in this resolution and depth on all three color channels,” Metsavainio told photography website PetaPixel.
(© JP Metsavainio)
It provides a magnificently dazzling view of our home galaxy, and one that we can’t help but get lost in. If you’re not sure where to start, or want to learn more about what you’re looking at, Metsavainio helpfully posted a series of mosaic frames on its blog, featuring individual nebulae.
We can also heartily recommend visiting his portfolio to take an awe-inspiring walk through his body of work. In particular, his 3D animations of nebulae will absolutely fill you up wanderlust for interstellar space travel.