The night sky in 37,440 exposures

The link to full article

"This is not a scientifically useful image. This is for educational and artistic appreciation," Risinger said, adding that he wasn't motivated by money but hopes to sell prints and other products to keep the website running.

 

To capture the entire night sky in a year, Risinger plotted out an exact schedule of images he needed from both the northern and southern hemisphere. He divided the sky into 624 uniform sections and entered those coordinates into the computer.

 

"The sheer amount of work was mind-boggling," he said at his apartment in Seattle. "It's not a wing-it kind of project. You have to plan how you're going to get the entire sky. And you do that by dividing it up into pieces and knowing what time you need to collect those pieces because as the Earth goes around the Sun, things come in and out of view."

 

In March of last year, Risinger and his older brother, Erik, traveled to the desert near Tonapah, Nev., and took the first photos of what eventually would become his Photopic Sky Survey.

 

When he realized the work was too monumental, Risinger quit his day job as a marketing director of a countertop company to devote himself full-time to the project

He then stitched 37,440 exposures together into a spectacular, panoramic survey sky that he posted online two weeks ago. The photo reveals a 360-degree view of the Milky Way, planets and stars in their true natural colors. Viewers can zoom in on portions of the 5,000-megapixel image to find Orion or the Large Magellanic Cloud.

 

"I wanted to share what I thought was possible," said Risinger, a first-time astrophotographer. "We don't see it like this. This is much brighter. On a good night in Seattle, you'll see 20 or 30 stars. This, in its full size, you'll see 20 to 30 million. Everything is amplified."

Awesome.