9 Gigapixel Image of the Milky Way (also zoomable)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Some of the images this page links to will hurt your browser bad if you click to display them.

You probably want this Flash-based zoomable version, where you can drag the image around nad use your scroll wheel on individual parts to zoom in on them. Marvel as tiny specks of light turn into star clusters, with each star being roughly as large as our own Sun on average (given that our Sun is about average-sized, correct?).

For reference, ‘Giga-’ means ‘multiply by one billion’ (American ‘billion’, so a one with nine zeroes after it). A 9 Gigapixel image has nine billion [del]points of light[/del] individual dots (picture elements, hence ‘pixel’) to it. And this image still only hits the highlights, as it were.

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It needs a ‘You Are Here’ pin.

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This made me chuckle :).

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So cool ! It is like google earth, but the other way around.

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I need an astronomer to tell me what I’m looking at. Very near the center bulge, a little down and to the left, is the brightest “star” in the whole galaxy. But is it a star? What is it that can be so huge and so bright?