3,000 Images Combine for Stunning Milky Way Portrait

November 3, 2009 | Source: Space.com

(Axel Mellinger of Central Michigan University)

A new 648-megapixel panoramic image of the full night sky, melded together from 3,000 individual photographs with mathematical models, shows stars 1,000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae.