The Milky Way Domain

The acclaimed work by Nick Risinger, Photopic Sky Survey, can be admired here as a marvelous 360-degree photomosaic of the Universe joined together in 2011, and it portrays a boundless continuum of stars and galaxies, each one regularly visible to the naked eye on a really clear night. Begin the simulated arena looking towards the galactic center of the Milky Way, and every direction you go expands the background into a gorgeous panorama with rich interstellar details that appear to make the screen look replete with starry objects. It is honestly quite entertaining just to move around some particular region and then gain a better perspective back from planet Earth, the vantage point looking free through the atmosphere, set aside from the Sun and the Moon. A few major identifiable celestial objects include the Pleiades (M45), Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and the Orion Nebula (M42), and they can easily be spotted in this 37,440-exposure, 5000-megapixel shot. The image provides an alluring insight into the breathtaking cosmic matter radiating light from the galactic realm of the Milky Way and space within the Virgo supercluster of the observable universe.


Andromeda (M31) is shown here as it is Milky Way's closest spiral galaxy neighbor (Image: NASA).