[FPSPACE] Fw: ESO: Interactive Panoramic View of the Entire Night Sky Unveiled

[LARRY KLAES]

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-----Original Message-----
From: "AAS Press Officer Dr. Rick Fienberg" <rick.fienberg at aas.org>

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:00:12 
To: <Rick.Fienberg at aas.org>
Subject: ESO: Interactive Panoramic View of the Entire Night Sky Unveiled


THE FOLLOWING RELEASE WAS RECEIVED FROM EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY
 HEADQUARTERS IN GARCHING, GERMANY, AND IS FORWARDED FOR YOUR
 INFORMATION. (FORWARDING DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT BY THE AMERICAN
 ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY.) Rick Fienberg, American Astronomical Society:
 rick.fienberg at aas.org, 1-202-328-2010 x116.
 
 Contacts:
 Henri Boffin / Olivier Hainaut
 ESO, Garching, Germany
 Phone: +49 89 3200 6222 / +49 89 3200 6752
 E-mail: hboffin2eso.org / ohainaut2eso.org
 
 Serge Brunier
 Paris, France
 Phone: +33 (0)6 80 05 41 81 and +33 (0)1 46 60 37 85
 E-mail: serge.brunier at wanadoo.fr
 
 The full text of this press release, together with images in high
 resolution and a video, is available on
 http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-32-09.html <http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-32-09.html> 
 
 ESO UNVEILS AN AMAZING, INTERACTIVE, 360-DEGREE
 PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE ENTIRE NIGHT SKY
 
 The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project -- a new
 magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from
 ESO's observing sites in Chile -- has just been released online. The
 project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it
 is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing
 locations in the world.
 
 This 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire celestial sphere,
 reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This
 gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely
 high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project,
 launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of
 Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). GigaGalaxy Zoom features a web tool that
 allows users to take a breathtaking dive into our Milky Way. With this
 tool users can learn more about many different and exciting objects in
 the image, such as multicolored nebulae and exploding stars, just by
 clicking on them. In this way, the project seeks to link the sky we
 can all see with the deep, "hidden" cosmos that astronomers study on a
 daily basis. The wonderful quality of the images is a testament to the
 splendor of the night sky at ESO's sites in Chile, which are the most
 productive astronomical observatories in the world.
 
 The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, which we see edge-on from our
 perspective on Earth, cuts a luminous swath across the image. The
 projection used in GigaGalaxy Zoom place the viewer in front of our
 Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image
 -- almost as if we were looking at the Milky Way from the outside.
 From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy
 come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and
 glowing nebulae, which harbors bright, young stars, as well as the
 Galaxy's central bulge and its satellite galaxies.
 
 The painstaking production of this image came about as a collaboration
 between ESO, the renowned French writer and astrophotographer Serge
 Brunier, and his fellow Frenchman Frederic Tapissier. Brunier spent
 several weeks during the period between August 2008 and February 2009
 capturing the sky, mostly from ESO observatories at La Silla and
 Paranal in Chile. In order to cover the full Milky Way, Brunier also
 made a week-long trip to La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, to
 photograph the northern skies [1]. Once the raw photographs were in
 hand, image processing by Tapissier and ESO experts helped to convey
 accurately the night sky as our eyes behold it [2]. The resulting
 image is composed of almost 300 fields each individually captured by
 Brunier four times, adding up to nearly 1200 photos that encompass the
 entire night sky.
 
 "I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to -- with its
 constellations, its thousands of stars, with names familiar since
 childhood, its myths shared by all civilizations since Homo became
 Sapiens," says Brunier. "The image was therefore made as man sees it,
 with a regular digital camera under the dark skies in the Atacama
 Desert and on La Palma."
 
 As photographing extended over several months, objects from the Solar
 System came and went through the star fields, with bright planets such
 as Venus and Jupiter. A brilliant, emerald-green comet also flew by,
 although spotting it among a background of tens of millions of stars
 will be difficult (but rewarding).
 
 Overall, the creators of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project hope that these
 tremendous efforts in bringing the night sky as observed under the
 best conditions on the planet to stargazers everywhere will inspire
 awe for the beautiful, immense Universe that we live in.
 
 "The vision of the IYA2009 is to help people rediscover their place in
 the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and this is exactly
 what the GigaGalaxy Zoom project is all about," says project
 coordinator Henri Boffin.
 
 The second dramatic GigaGalaxy Zoom image will be revealed next week,
 on 21 September 2009.
 
 Notes
 
 [1] During his quest, Brunier used a Nikon D3 digital camera. The
 apparent motion of the sky caused by Earth's rotation was corrected
 for using a small, precise equatorial mount moving in the opposite
 direction, which made a whole circle in 23 hours 56 minutes around the
 Earth's axis of rotation. Each photo required a six-minute exposure,
 for a total exposure time of more than 120 hours.
 
 [2] The data processing, using software called Autopano Pro Giga, took
 great care in respecting the colors and "texture" of the Milky Way.
 Frederic Tapissier needed about 340 computing hours on a powerful PC
 to complete the task.
 
 More Information
 
 As part of the IYA2009, ESO is participating in several remarkable
 outreach activities, in line with its world-leading rank in the field
 of astronomy. ESO is hosting the IYA2009 Secretariat for the
 International Astronomical Union, which coordinates the Year globally.
 ESO is one of the Organizational Associates of IYA2009, and was also
 closely involved in the resolution submitted to the United Nations
 (UN) by Italy, which led to the UN's 62nd General Assembly proclaiming
 2009 the International Year of Astronomy. In addition to a wide array
 of activities planned both at the local and international level, ESO
 is leading three of the twelve global Cornerstone Projects.
 
 ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost
 intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the world's
 most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 14
 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France,
 Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
 Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious
 program focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful
 ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make
 important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in
 promoting and organizing cooperation in astronomical research. ESO
 operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla,
 Paranal, and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large
 Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical
 observatory. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary
 astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in
 existence. ESO is currently planning a 42-metre European Extremely
 Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become
 "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
 
 Serge Brunier is a French journalist, photographer and writer who
 specializes in popularizing astronomy. He is a regular contributor to
 Science & Vie magazine, and to the France Info radio station. He has
 written numerous popular astronomy books, translated into over ten
 languages, and is a prize-winning photographer, who has captured
 images of solar eclipses from the most amazing places in the world. A
 life-long quest for the best skies in the world led him to Chile.
 
 This whole sky panorama was presented from 25 August till 13 September
 2009 in the exhibition "Un ciel pour la planete" (A sky for the
 planet) in the Atrium of the Monte-Carlo Casino, Monaco. With a giant
 print of 12 times 6 meters, the exhibition was under the Patronage of
 The Prince Albert II of Monaco, and showed with images and videos the
 making of this unique ESO project.
 
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