Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the November issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. An interactive version of the picture can viewed on Mellinger's website: http://home.arcor.de/axel.mellinger/.

“This panorama image shows stars 1000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae,” Mellinger said. Its high resolution makes the panorama useful for both educational and scientific purposes, he says.

Mellinger spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. After the photographs were taken, “the real work started,” Mellinger said.

Simply cutting and pasting the images together into one big picture would not work. Each photograph is a two-dimensional projection of the celestial sphere. As such, each one contains distortions, in much the same way that flat maps of the round Earth are distorted. In order for the images to fit together seamlessly, those distortions had to be accounted for. To do that, Mellinger used a mathematical model—and hundreds of hours in front of a computer.

Another problem Mellinger had to deal with was the differing background light in each photograph.

“Due to artificial light pollution, natural air glow, as well as sunlight scattered by dust in our solar system, it is virtually impossible to take a wide-field astronomical photograph that has a perfectly uniform background,” Mellinger said.

To fix this, Mellinger used data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes. The data allowed him to distinguish star light from unwanted background light. He could then edit out the varying background light in each photograph. That way they would fit together without looking patchy.

The result is an image of our home galaxy that no star-gazer could ever see from a single spot on earth. Mellinger plans to make the giant 648 megapixel image available to planetariums around the world.

About Dr. Axel Mellinger:

Axel Mellinger was born in Munich, Germany and is currently an assistant professor at Central Michigan University. His daytime work is in the field of polymer physics, but he also has nearly 30 years of experience in astronomy and astrophotography. His Milky Way panorama image, as well as links to his other astrophotography projects, can be found on his web site at http://home.arcor.de/axel.mellinger/.

About PASP:

The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific has been published regularly since 1889, as part of the ASP's mission to advance the science of astronomy and disseminate astronomical information. This journal provides an outlet for astronomical results of a scientific nature and serves to keep readers in touch with current astronomical research. PASP is published by The University of Chicago Press.