EUROPE: German astronomers have come up with the largest known image of the Milky Way to date — a 46 billion megapixel photo with a file size of 194 GB, featuring a vast bed of stars. The photo was finally completed through five years’ worth of data gathering in astronomical studies.
The astronomers from Ruhr University Bochum led by Dr. Rolf Chini have been following the Milky Way in the quest for cosmic objects that exude variable brightness. These materials may entail stars located in front of a passing planet and numerous systems where stars rotate and sometimes abstruse each other.
Moritz Hackstein, who was then working on his thesis as part of his doctoral studies, compiled pictures of objects with medium brightness. Part of this endeavor is the nightly capturing of southern sky images by a group from the Chair of Astrophysics.
The team utilized the telescopes of the university’s observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile for the project. So far, over 50,000 new variable materials have been discovered and recorded.
The astronomers had to divide the subject area of study into 268 sections because of its massive size. They captured a photo of each region in intervals for a couple of days. They then compared the images and were able to determine the objects with variable brightness.
