Megalaxy zoom

This 230 million pixels image shows a detailed view of the galactic center. This very bright region of the night sky stretches from the constellation Scorpius to the constellation of the Corona Australis. Realizing this image was impossible from France because the galactic center raises barely above the horizon. The acquisitions were made in the Southern Hemisphere, under the most beautiful skies of the world when the galactic center was at the zenith: 2 trips to Chile (2016 and 2018) and 1 trip to Namibia (2019).

There, during the autumn and the austral winter, the galactic center is at the zenith and the stars shine so much that they illuminate a night devoid of any light pollution. It's a light from the past. The black is not complete and once our eyes accustomed, it reigns like a "small moon" atmosphere: it is possible to walk without a headlamp.

I invite you to discover this extraordinary region of the sky, rich in golden stars, dark and colorful nebulae.

Have a nice celestial walk.

Bastien

https://www.bastienfoucher.com

Some numbers

• Total exposure time : 38h40
• Number of stacked pictures : 2320
• Final dimensions : 13655 * 16831 pixels (229.8 mega pixels)
• 37 tiles were assembled to create the mosaic, each picture was a one hour exposure (or more when I forgot to cut the intervalometer ;))
• Weight of the final .tif file (compressed): 1.98 GB
• Total calculation time : I do not know much, but each calculation of the mosaic took about 10 hours. As I launched a good fortnight to refine the settings, my PC may have ran in total more than 150 hours just to calculate the image :)

Waiting ... under the most beautiful starry sky I have seen in the heart of the Kalahari Desert in Namibia. Note how bright the stars are on the horizon
I was in space, what a memory ... (Namibia 2019)

Situation

The image covers the regions of the constellations of Sagittarius, Scorpius and the Corona Australis that lie around the galactic bulge, an extremely region rich in celestial objects.

The "zoom" achieved corresponds to the galactic center, as shown in this complete image of the Milky Way made in 2016. 12 fields, made in the northern and southern hemispheres, with a 24 mm objective were assembled.

Annotated version

The 3 constellations were drawn and 46 objects were identified on this annotated image. Click on the image to open the zoomable image :

Click on the image to access the annotated zoomable version.

Hardware and software

The acquisitions were made with a modded Canon EOS 6D set to ISO 800 and a Canon EF lens 135mm F2@F2.5. The mounts were a Vixen GPD2 (Chile 2016) and a small Skywatcher Star Adventurer (Chile 2018, Namibia 2019). These mounts are not automatable, so the framing was done manually with the live view with so many overlaps ... Hence the large number of tiles. Pre-processing and mosaic assembly were done with the Astro Pixel Processor software and the final processing was done in Photoshop.

The "raw" result of the assembly of the mosaic obtained in Astropixel Processor software. Each calculation took about 10 hours.
The overlaps are generous : the framings were hand-made with the liveview, the Star Adventurer is not automatable...

Buy a print

Thanks to the very large size of the image, prints in very large format (up to 3 meters high with a very beautiful definition) can be purchased. Extracts such as those presented below can also be made. The print can be made on satin paper (very little sensitive to reflections) or on semi-gloss paper (more sensitive to reflections). For the prices, the dimensions or any other service (laminating on alu-dibond, framing American box ...), please contact me clicking the button below.

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