Largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever | Hacker News Reader

Largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever

media.skysurvey.org

141 pointsRumudiez57 comments

From the author: http://skysurvey.org/blog/2011/2/17/for-all-the-nights-stars

I was surprised to find that this wasn't a compilation of Sloan images, or one of the larger sky survey collaborations. This appears to be a one-person project.

I guess because the title here says "photograph" it didn't occur to me until the second visit that I could click and drag to look around. When I did though I got hit with the "Oh wow. That's incredible." sensation.

I love this.

same here

Impressive to see how big (near) the Andromeda galaxy is compared to all the rest.

Andromeda looks actually really big! It reminds of this post on APOD showing the apparent size compared to the moon: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061228.html

Mind = blown.

Wow! I had seen Andromeda before as a casual star-gazer and still had not realized this, just as the cited NASA webpage points out.

It looks so different like this!

The Andromeda Galaxy was easy to spot, but I couldn't find any of the constellations I'm familiar with (until I found the "Show Constellations and Objects" button).

Does anyone know what the clouds of black are in the galactic plane? Is there something in the way, or are there no stars there?

Dust and gas blocking light from the stars behind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_dust + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_lane

Just found you can zoom with the mousewheel. Zomming in on what appears an interesting feature reveals more and more details. This is just awesome. I can't help but feel more insignificant than usual when exploring this sky map.

It'd be even cooler if there were deeper zoom levels which linked in images specifically of a particular object. Say I find and zoom in on the Horse Head Nebula I get to images of that specific object.

Well, you can click on the object which takes you to further information.

It would had been better if this sky map was not only Earth-centric, but also had Earth's polar coordinate system, or at least Earth's rotation axis. Here if you look "up" and rotate the sky, there isn't a North Star sitting there, and that's weird.

Smallest false-color tiny FOV long exposure photograph from Val Thorens ever: http://pilgrimbreak.com/sites/default/files/DSCF2027.JPG

This looks amazing. I wish the app was available to us foreigners as well.

I am about to buy an iPad for the first time, and I thought "this would be a great app, cool!" and clicked on the store link.

So annoying that it's US store only - why do devs do this, anyone know?

This is so well done - I especially like the galactic reference in the lower left corner, that shows the FOV and direction. I promise not to say anything unkind about Flash for at least a week.

I wish there was an easy way to save the current view as a PNG. I could set it to full screen and use Print Screen, but the app icon and interface buttons would need to be edited out.

You could probably shift the view up a bit, take a second screenshot and stitch the two together well enough for a wallpaper.

Indeed, it would make a nice wallpaper.

1. Play Eve Online 2. Set a route going through dozens of hisec system 3. Hit Autopilot (ctrl+s) 4. Enter windowless mode (ctrl+F9) 5. Sit back and enjoy the nicest interactive screensaver o7

Is there a reason why it appears more populated and dense in the middle as opposed to the upper or lower regions? Is that the plane of our galaxy, or something to do with the light?

Yes, it's the plane of our galaxy. If you click show constellations and objects, you can see where we are in the spiral, bottom left.

What is the "shadow" that appears to go across the plane in a very irregular manner? Is there a local dust cloud obscuring parts of the main plane?

It's the Great Rift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_(astronomy)

Interesting, I haven't seen this clustering from looking at the sky before - is it because this is more sensitive than the naked eye?

This is one of the downsides of living in a heavily populated area. It's quite visible once you get away from the light pollution around cities.

It's called the Milky Way!

In general, you can't see it if you're anywhere near an urban area.

You can see it in areas with little light pollution (although not quite like this image), otherwise most of the stars are too faint.

It's a side view of the milky way - our galaxy. You can see it at night if you look up, and you live far away enough from a large city or light polluted area.

Lovely picture. Looks a bit different from the sky outside my house: that's what I get for living near other people...

Anyone used their iOS app? Is it better/different than Star Walk?

I didn't see this info anywhere so...

Try these keys:

a for in, z for out,

and the 4 arrow keys...

much better that way!

sky map with higher resolution: http://server7.sky-map.org/v2?ra=17.243&de=-38.586&zoom=2&im...

I was able to spot the Magellan clouds, the Andromeda but where is Triangulum?

Just below Andromeda. Find Mirach, the brightest star below the plane of Andromeda, then go the same distance further south.

Can't get it to work on firefox (v26.0) on osx (v10.7.5)

Deleted comment

The biggest surprise to me is it requires Adobe Flash.

Why it is bright only in middle and dark else where?

Imagine you are look at a CD from the center, you would see matter in the middle but not above nor below. It is a little bit the same thing except the solar system and our Earth are not located in the center of the galaxy but somewhere close to the edge.

Can anyone find any planets in this photo?

Jupiter is there. Press on the (i) icon and it shows constellations. Jupiter's orbit is shown in green.

The green line is actually the ecliptic, the path which the Sun travels on the celestial sphere. You may find all the other planets along it also, because it is coplanar with Earth's orbit around the sun and, as consequence, almost coplanar with the other planet's orbits.

According to the map, the green band is Earth's ecliptic, The suns path from our view on earth.

I felt I am the actor in gravity!

iPad / iPhone version not available? Come on.

I know, I'm sick of websites that do things like this.

I suppose it's because they want you to download the app that is linked on the bottom right corner?

The link doesn't appear if you visit on an iOS device. Could you post it here?

Here you go: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sky-survey/id518884826?ls=1&...

And I'm sick of iPhone users ...

So sorry. Some of us just think that if we have a standards compliant web browser we should be able to use it to view things regardless of what device it is running on.

And your point is? The website is based on Flash and there is an iPhone app available. Now, how is this related to browser standards?

Maybe make that clear? Maybe have a link to the iPhone app? Something better than a ca. 1999 "get a real browser" message.

No WP/Android version => failure.

Really? The project is an abject failure because it was made available without an Android or Windows Phone version? Sure it would be cool if it had one, but I think there are enough people out there with access to desktop browsers or iOS devices to make it at least marginally worthwhile!

Just do not feed (idiotic) trolls.

Who knows what hit him last day/morning/night, that killed his mood and changed him into antisocial-hulk. ;-)

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