The Milky Way

Image: The Milky Way

Caption: This panoramic view of the sky has been assembled from 51 wide-angle photographs. The individual images were computer-processed and transformed to a cartesian frame based on galactic coordinates prior to assembly, thus eliminating the distortions introduced by the wide-angle lens. Subsequently, the mosiac was converted to an Aitoff projection, where the galactic equator runs horizontally through the image. The familiar constellation of Orion lies near the right edge, below the galactic equator. The bright objects in the right half of the image, below the band of the Milky Way, are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, our nearest neighbor galaxies. 
Credit: Axel Mellinger, University of Potsdam, Germany

NSF permission to use: YES (External and internal use)
NSF funded: NO

Website: http://canopus.physik.uni-potsdam.de/~axm/astrophot.html
Source: Robert Kirshner
Speaker at NSF Funded The Universe From the Ground Up Astronomy Symposium

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