
9 Gigapixel Image of the Milky Way - onosendai
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/
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chaosmachine
Zoomable: <http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/117375>

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NiekvdMaas
Official zoomable version:
<http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/>

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s_henry_paulson
Hundreds of billions of planets, and this is just our one small galaxy.

Just given the sheer scale of the universe, I think we almost have to be
foolish to think that we're the only life forms that exist in the whole thing.

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elorant
It’s also foolish (no pun intended) to think that the Universe was meant to
have life. We tend to believe that life is what gives meaning to all that
vastness but Cosmos doesn’t need a reason for its existence, it’s just there.

Furthermore it’s not about just life but intelligent life. Life in form of
microbes could be all around the Universe. But intelligent life could be
extremely rare or it could be just too early and we could be the first of many
species to come. It’s not egoistic to think so, it doesn’t make us feel unique
and special, more likely it makes us feel depressed thinking that we are the
only ones or the first of many to come.

If you take the Drake equation for example and tweak a couple of pessimistic
numbers you realize it doesn’t take long before you come to the conclusion
that life is extremely rare. A very good implementation you can find here:
[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-
worl...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-worlds-exist)

I would also like to point to the Fermi paradox. Given the aforementioned
Drake equation many scientists have made estimations about the number of
civilization in our galaxy. Estimations vary from a few dozen to the
thousands. But if there were even one advanced civilization in the galaxy they
should already have made contact somehow. That is the basis of the Fermi
paradox, you can find more at Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

~~~
stargazer-3
It is also foolish to take Drake equation seriously or assume that we know
what intelligent life is. Drake equation should be used for demonstration
purposes only. As a side not, it is good to keep in mind that all we did for
ETI search was looking out for a human-like radio signal with a narrow
bandwidth, which is probably not the best way to transmit information through
the Universe.

~~~
elorant
If you read the link I gave for the Fermi paradox you'll see that this is one
of the dozen explanations on why we haven't been contacted yet by an alien
civilization. So, yes, we might be trying to contact the wrong way.

Actually though it's not exactly wrong, we managed to capture once a
significant signal that could be of alien origin. It's called the wow signal
and you can find more here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal>

The basis of the Fermi paradox though isn't about what we did/do to contact
alien civilizations but the fact that even if one advanced existed in our
galaxy they should have already found us even if we weren't looking for them.
Which brings us back to the conclusion that there might not be advanced
civilizations around and life could very well be in the beginning.

As for the Drake equation it's not a law of physics. It is just a way to
estimate the number of habitable planets in the galaxy and from there to make
an assumption of the number of alien civilizations able to make interstellar
contact.

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lhtbws
This is amazing. When you can zoom in on a bright speck and discover that it's
actually a giant cluster of stars, and then continue zooming in on that
cluster until it doesn't seem dense anymore, it actually lends context to the
static photos of space we've all seen before.

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VorticonCmdr
Very cool. Does anyone know why some areas are somewhat blueish. And what
about the very bright stars?

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wl
The colors are a bit arbitrary. The sensor that takes these images only
records intensity and not color. Different filters are placed over the sensor
to record different wavelengths. Not all of these wavelengths are visible
light. The colors are a mapping of these wavelengths to the visible spectrum.

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colinwinter
It'd be REALLY cool if someone could turn this into a screensaver, where it
progressively pans and zooms in/out. Then when you're mind is just about to be
blown at full-zoom-in, it should rotate like a boss and slap a new perspective
of life into your life.

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3rd3
Are there some well known features on the picture?

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Father
Here's a similar thing also made from infrared images of the milky way
[http://djer.roe.ac.uk/vsa/vvv/iipmooviewer-2.0-beta/vvvgps5....](http://djer.roe.ac.uk/vsa/vvv/iipmooviewer-2.0-beta/vvvgps5.html)

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andrewcooke
abstract <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012A%26A...537A.107S> with link to
paper (i think; still downloading paper).

update: the paper is fairly large and doesn't have pretty pictures (it has
lots of technical plots, but i imagine it's not what most people think of as a
fun read). also, this image is more a "public view" of the data; the paper is
for the underlying survey.

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aaronmoodie
I'm not sure if this is by the same photographer, but the image used in the
Sky Survey app is pretty incredible as well. <http://skysurvey.org>

I'm really looking forward to being able to combine detailed visuals like
these with the rift 3d headset or like.

boom!

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bajsejohannes
Why is the milky way (I assume that's what we call the fat strip) not
centered? Is that just a projection thing? Does the edges of this image wrap?

(I know shamefully little astronomy)

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stargazer-3
What do you mean by 'not centered'? Imagine you are standing on a field of
corn. To you, the field looks like a line encircling you, although it may look
like a square or circle from above. There's your projection thing.

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eslaught
Ok, where do I get the 9 Gigapixel version? :-)

P.S. Yes, I know I don't really need that much resolution, but still.

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lloeki
> P.S. Yes, I know I don't really need that much resolution, but still.

I call bullshit ;-) as at 15" retina is 4Mpix. In a short time span we'll have
20~30" retina)class at that size and they could very well be 9~15Mpix. Of
course billion pixels is way too much, but it means that it will scale to the
future (I'd love to have a wall-screen with this)

Anyway, multiple links are on the lower part of the rightmost column,
available from 1024x768 to full res in a variety of formats.

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pserwylo
How does ~275Gpix sound? [0][1]. I did a stint at UCSD for two months as an
undergrad, and sat next to this monster while they were playing with it.

It might sound stupid having that much resolution, but it really is cool to be
able to see that much information in front of you. It's especially good if you
have a number of people standing around who are interacting with various data
sets.

And if you want one yourself, it is all COTS hardware, and you can start with
just a few screens then add later [2].

[0] <http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1307> [1]
<http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/07-08HIPerSpace.asp> [2]
[http://optiportal.org/index.php/Main_Page#How_to_build_an_Op...](http://optiportal.org/index.php/Main_Page#How_to_build_an_Optiportal)

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brandoncapecci
How long until we have a macbook with 108,500 by 81,500 resolution?

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jordanmoore_
... in a lightbox!

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maeon3
It's really really big. What gets you is that it's really there, go outside
and look up. All those stars, all that energy running down, without anything
harnessing that energy.

There it is, running down like a forest fire. What will it turn into next? I
see the universe as an egg. And it's designed to become a single super
sentient entity someday that makes our sentience look like inanimate energy.
Our sentience will be the inanimate matter building blocks for something we
can't comprehend.

We will comprehend it as much as a carbon molecule comprehends the human mind.

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rorrr
If you zoom all the way in, it's blurry (I know, I waited for the tiles to
load). There's no single-pixel detail. That means it's not really a
9-gigapixel image, you can easily reduce it by 2x2, and make it a
2.3-gigapixel images. Save space, bandwidth and time for everyone.

~~~
seandougall
I found the same thing, but see chaosmachine's reply above. The unofficial
version actually works.

