An astrophotographer took 12 years to create this mosaic of the Milky Way
Sonia Ramirez
March 22, 2021
Updated: March 22, 2021 6:54 p.m.
A section of the mosaic image of the Milky Way galaxy created over the course of 12 years by
astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio.
Screenshot Twitter/Space.com
An impressive mosaic image of the Milky Way galaxy took a Finnish astrophotographer 12 years to create.
J-P Metsavainio captured the hidden beauty of the entire Milky Way galaxy in a 1.7-gigapixel mosaic image that took 1,250 hours over the span of 12 years to make, according to Chelsea Gohd with Space.com.
Metsavainio started the project in 2009 and describes why it took so long to capture the image in his blog.
"The reason for a long time period is naturally the size of the mosaic and the fact that [the] image is very deep." Metsavainio said. "Another reason is that I have shot most of the mosaic frames as an individual compositions and publish them as independent artworks."
The image consists of 234 individual mosaic panels stitched together spanning 125 by 22 degrees of the Milky Way, including roughly over 20 million individual stars visible in the photo, according to Metsavainio.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/space/article/Milky-Way-nebula-photograph-12-years-galaxy-16043627.php
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insider@insider.com (Aria Bendix) 10 hrs ago
J-P Metsavainio's mosaic captures a portion of the Milky Way. J-P Metsavainio
The Milky Way galaxy is nearly 2 million light-years across. To visualize even a small chunk of this collection of asteroids, stars, planets, dust, and gas, photographers have to piece together a vast collection of telescope images.
For the past 12 years, the photographer J-P Metsavainio has undertaken that challenge.
Metsavainio started taking snapshots of the Milky Way from his observatory in Oulu, Finland, in 2009. Earlier this month, he released a mosaic image of the galaxy that stretches from Taurus, a constellation about 2,200 light-years from Earth, to Cygnus, another constellation about 6,100 light-years away.
The mosaic captures about 20 million stars in total. (The entire Milky Way has hundreds of billions of stars.)
It also features objects that are tough to catch on camera, like the remains of three supernovas.
. . .
Metsavainio lives about 90 miles from the Arctic Circle and has a private at-home observatory. For six months of the year, the cloudless sky above his home is ideal for stargazing. He takes advantage of this winter period to observe objects via telescope and snap photographs of them.
"I work every single clear night," he said.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-stunning-image-of-the-milky-way-took-12-years-to-photograph-it-shows-the-ghost-of-a-supernova/ar-BB1eSS3x?li=BBnb7Kz
Link to images of Oulu, Finland:
https://tinyurl.com/3v8rhjk3