7 ms·
Grand mosaic of the Milky Way is now larger than ever
- dotancohen 5y agoI would love to see this edited into some viewscreen images on the NCC-1701[-D] bridge.
- ginko 5y agoA professional large photo plot of this would probably look seriously impressive.
- semi-extrinsic 5y agoEven at 200 dpi this would be 15 meters wide and 2.25 meters tall. Imagine that in a museum, just a massive wall with 100 billion stars. It would be ridiculously cool.
- zokier 5y agoRealistically, that seems pretty achievable goal for a Kickstarter? Rent some smallish exhibit space (500-1000sqft old warehouse or something?) in the valley/bay area outskirts for a few months, find a large format printer service, print out in strips, and figure out physical installation. How much can that really cost? $10-20k total? Somehow I feel its not far fetched that there would be a thousand geeks willing to chip in $10-$20 bucks for this sort of thing
- mensetmanusman 5y agoMight be even less. Japan is huge on making very large graphics from printing on sheets of white adhesive: https://youtu.be/ioyMec7YU0Y https://youtu.be/ioyMec7YU0Y If they added it to the ground it cheaper to install and then kids could run on it in the gym (could easily cover an entire Gym, lol): https://youtu.be/mBjSM783Tug https://youtu.be/mBjSM783Tug Would be fun with the retroreflectors added like in the latter video, as with the lights off and only head lamps on you could see stars below your feet.
- beezle 5y agoThat's pretty neat. But I wonder what the surface looks like after removal?
- mensetmanusman 5y agoOf the sticker? Very clean, because the adhesive is built to stick together like a command strip.
- beezle 5y agoNo, was thinking how does the wall look after removal? Does the adhesive take paint or other parts of the surface off?
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI have worked with this type of material. It depends a lot on the strength of the underlying layers. If it is just cement, it takes bits of dust/debris with. If it is stained wood, it can peel some of the stain off if it is left on for a while. If it is painted drywall, it can peel off any little bits of poorly primed paint unless a heat gun is used to gently remove it by softening the adhesive (even this can be tricky though…). On glass it’s perfect :) For a robust epoxied wooden gym floor, it would be a clean removal.
- dang 5y agoA related thread: Milky Way, 12 years, 1250 hours of exposures and 125 x 22 degrees of sky - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26490579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26490579 - March 2021 (139 comments)
- kerblang 5y agoApparently 100 billion stars in there. That is nuts.
- yumraj 5y agoYup. Even at 1 in every 1 million systems, that could be 100,000 systems with life. Or, even at 1 in every 10 million, that could be 10,000 systems with life. In a way I hate these photos. It's like showing a kid an ultra delicious looking candy, but telling them that they will not be able to taste it in their lifetime.
- zokier 5y agoBut for all we know the odds could be 1 in every 100 billion; we have no way of knowing, almost any guess you'd make is equally unfounded.
- p1necone 5y agoIt's like the one tank variant of the German tank problem[0], except the tanks aren't even numbered. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
- mensetmanusman 5y agoWhat are the odds we are the only one?
- wahern 5y agoNobody can tell you without pulling numbers out of thin air. That's the point. The only thing that can be said is that the probability of intelligent life arising is greater than 0, which follows from our own existence. Beyond that, any claims about the likelihood of intelligent life are just 20th and 21st century versions of "there must be a God because the universe couldn't have arisen by chance."
- 5y ago
- jl6 5y agoIntense pareidolia a quarter of the way across, of a sci-fi warrior/genie dude holding up a weapon.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- NKosmatos 5y agoWow!!! I’d like to read more details about the PC and software he used. Besides the Photoshop that is mentioned, no other details about the system (cpu, ram, disk…).
- Nition 5y agoIs there a higher resolution image of this available anywhere? The 7000 x 1150 one is nice, but I couldn't find a link to anything larger. It says the original is 120,000 x 18,000 so it was a little disappointing to have the available version not even fill the vertical resolution of my monitor.
- sen 5y agoYeah I'd pay for a full resolution version so I can get this printed across my entire wall. Despite the "high" resolution of many of the pictures on the page, not a single one is high enough resolution to print much larger than A3 or so while still seeing the stars/details.
- r3trohack3r 5y agoAuthor is a professional photographer. Suspect that, with an email and a pile of cash, they’d license you the work.
- pfp 5y agoHe's selling (up to A2 or so) prints via https://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/ https://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/ . Maybe you can contact him & ask for something larger.
- foobiekr 5y agoI would absolutely buy something larger.
- HotHotLava 5y agoThe largest option in his shop is actually 5m x 75cm, divided into 5 panels. But that also comes at a price of 7.5k EUR, or 12.5k EUR for a glicee print.
- dan353hehe 5y agoI also was hoping to find a higher resolution image I could buy to print out somehow. The full resolution is 18k x 120k pixels. At 300 DPI that works out to be 60 x 400 inches. Or 5 feet tall and 33 feet and 3 inches long, or close to 2 meters high and 10 meters long. I think I might have a hallway that it could fit in, but wow that’s big!
- xedrac 5y agoThis is stunning work. Bravo! I feel so small and insignificant right now. And that's not a bad thing.
- dylan604 5y agoThat's one of my favorite aspects of astronomy. To the universe, we're (Earth) just a spec on a dot. The stepping away from all of the things that seem so stressingly important and realize that it's only us that feels that stress and the universe really absolutely doesn't give a shit. It always helps me to give less of a shit too.
- monkeydust 5y agoSo true. If I happen to be do something new, high risk or making me stress out thinking about it in context of the larger universe (and staring at these pictures help) quickly puts me at ease. Very effective. I have passed this to others over the years.
- SNosTrAnDbLe 5y agoI always look at the "Pale Blue Dot" image shot by Voyager if I ever have a need to feel insignificant. Never fails me!
- thombat 5y agoComplete with Carl Sagan's magestic description: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
- Iwan-Zotow 5y agoYou ought to see it in person, in any dark sky place - that would clear your perspectives
- milleramp 5y agoDamn, I wish my engineering journal had drawings like that in it.
- kushan2020 5y agoDamn! So much out there that we might never be able to see.
- mountainboy 5y agoQuestion: What would it look like to be living on an electron, whizzing around a proton, inside a molecule, inside a living being?
- dotancohen 5y agoDepends on what _you_ are made of. If you're small enough to live on what is a point particle in our universe, then your concept of "looks like" will be different than ours. For one thing, your interaction with photons will be different than ours.
- wiz21c 5y agoQuestion: why are pictures taken from the space station showing really dark space ? The pictures of the mosaic have many stars and I guess the milkyway can be observed from earth too. So why all that black on the photos taken from space ? An issue with contrast ?
- akira2501 5y ago"Exposure time over 1500 hours between 2009 - 2021"
- TeMPOraL 5y agoIANAAstrophotographer, but I'd say it's indeed a contrast issue (dynamic range of cameras). Most ISS photos are taken on the day side and have Earth in view; the brightness of reflected light is so great it prevents cameras from recording stars. A quick googling for photos taken from ISS at night reveals that they do feature stars in them.
- snigacookie 5y agoWhere is the Earth in this?