Finnish astronaut JP Metsavainio has posted a picture of the Milky Way panorama on his Twitter account. He has 12 years and 1250 hours captured this amazing image. The result of his hard work is the most remarkable work of astronomy. The designer started his work in the year 2009 and has completed the work in 2021.
JP Metsavainio spent 12 hours capturing an image
It took him twelve years to complete the mosaic of the statue. The image he produced is about 100,000 pixels wide, 234 individual mosaic panels are stitched together and 1.7 gigapixels. JP Metsavainio in his blog has given two reasons for taking so long to capture the picture. He said,
The reason for a long time is naturally the size of the mosaic and of course, that image is very deep. Another reason is that I have soht most of the mosaic frames as an individual make up and publish them as independent works of art.
The California Nebula, NGC 1499, can be seen at the bottom left of the large mosaic statue. Cliu: JP Metsavainio www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com
For the picture, his processing workflow was stable. He said the total exposure time is over 1250 hours and that some frames have more exposure time than others. Pictured are some very low-lying objects such as the remains of the W63, the Cygnus Shell. It lies about six levels up from the North American nebula and is seen as a pale blue ring. He said,
I spent about 100 hours for this SNR alone.
Image in mapped colors from light emitted by an ionized element, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue. Cliu: JP Metsavainio www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com
According to the photographer’s blog, the remains of a large and slender supernova in Cygnus can be seen at the very edge of the image. G65.5 + 5.7 is as big as the most famous Veil nebula. There are over 60 hours of exposure for this SNR alone.
A close-up from the main image shows the Sharpless 124 at the top and the Cocoon nebula with a dark gas stream at the bottom. Cliu: JP Metsavainio www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com
Equipment for the photograph
He has used several optical configurations for this mosaic image over the years. Up until 2014, it used an old Meade LX200 12 “GPS range, QHY9 astrocam, Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics and a Baader slim band filter set. Alta U16, Tokina AT-x 200mm f2.8 camera lens and Astrodon square 50mm narrowband sieve set. It has captured a lot of detail with longer focus length using Meade 12 “range with reducer by 2014 .After that he started using Celestron EDGE 11 “and reducer. The Quider camera has been Lodestar and Lodestar II. Netizens have praised the commitment of the designer.