The display print is a small section of a much larger image of our galaxy.
The full image was stitched together from over 800,000 frames from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and is over 2.5 billion pixels wide! This display print is just one of 16 sections. Each section is approximately 25,000 pixels wide and at this print size is 165" (13.75 feet) wide. If you were to print the entire image at this same proportion it would be 220 feet long!
This is a three-color composite that shows infrared observations from two Spitzer instruments. Blue represents 3.6-micron light and green shows light of 8 microns, both captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Red is 24-micron light detected by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer. Different objects emit at different wavelengths: thermal emission, or heat, from warm dust is rendered in red, while star-forming regions appear as swirls of red and yellow, where the warm dust overlaps with the glowing organic molecules. The diffuse green glow seen everywhere in the image is from complex organic molecules called PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. On Earth those are created when fossil fuels are burned; in space, they are byproducts of stellar birth and death. The blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are Milky Way stars.
The Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire team (GLIMPSE) used the telescope's infrared array camera to see light from newborn stars, old stars and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A second group, the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer Galactic Plane Survey team (MIPSGAL), imaged dust in the inner galaxy with Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer.
Our display print is 25,000px / 165”(13.75') wide, took 5 hours to print on the Epson 9800 on Premium Luster Photo Paper (260) and would cost you $165!
Image Credit:
The Infrared Milky Way: GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL
Spitzer Space Telescope/IRAC/MIPS
NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin), GLIMPSE Team and S. Carey (SSC-Caltech), MIPSGAL Team
No comments:
Post a Comment