Milky Way Panorama (with a Backstory)

Nick Risinger, an ama­teur astronomer from Seat­tle, quit his day job last year, packed his bags and cam­eras, and began a 60,000 mile jour­ney, mov­ing across the Amer­i­can West and down to the west­ern Cape of South Africa (twice). His voy­age would end with a 5000-megapix­el pho­to­graph of the entire night sky, pro­duced from 37,440 sep­a­rate expo­sures, and it yields a stag­ger­ing 360-degree view of the Milky Way. Even bet­ter, the image now lives online in an inter­ac­tive for­mat, giv­ing you the abil­i­ty to wan­der through the cos­mos.

For more on this, be sure to vis­it Pho­topic Sky Sur­vey. Here Risinger gives you the per­son­al and tech­ni­cal back­sto­ry on his project, and also gives you the chance to pur­chase pho­tos, or even lend finan­cial sup­port to the sky sur­vey.

via The Mail Online