Researchers at the University of Bochum in Germany have compiled the largest astronomical image captured to date; it contains 46 billion pixels. It was pieced together from five years of observations of the Milky Way.
The scientists put together the image during the course of monitoring of our galaxy to find "objects with variable brightness," which may be individuals stars that are obscured for a time by passing planets, or systems of multiple stars in which the stars orbit and sometimes obscure each other."
The results of the study, called the southern Galactic Disk Survey [GDS], have been published in the journal 'Solar and Stellar Astrophysics', and present the first complete version of the GDS, subdivided into 268 fields.
Milky Way photo with 46 billion pixels
© Ruhr-Universität Bochum
"The individual fields were observed up to 272 times and comprise a maximum time span between September 2010 and May 2015," write the scientists in their paper, entitled "The Bochum Survey of the Southern Galactic Disk: II. Follow-up measurements and multi-filter photometry for 1,323 square degrees monitored in 2010-2015."
"We detect a total of 64,151 variable sources, which are presented in a catalog, including some of their properties and their light curves."
The images of the galaxy were taken using telescopes at Bochum University's observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, and the astronomers have published the 46 billion pixel compilation of photographs online. A viewing tool allows the user to look at the complete ribbon of the Milky Way, and to zoom in or search for a specific area to observe.
