360 Panorama of Whole Night Sky

Every so often something amazing comes along that truly has the capacity to make one stop and just go 'Wow'. The Photopic Sky Survey is one of those things. Photographer Nick Risinger travelled nearly 60,000 miles taking individual images of the night time sky and then painstakingly stitched them together to form a composite 360° night time panorama.

The task was painstaking, dividing the sky into 624 uniformly spaced areas and then seeking out light-free places from which to capture the images using 6 cameras. Each sector was photographed 60 time using 4 short, 4 medium, and 4 long shots for each camera to help to reduce the amount of noise, overhead satellite trails and other unwanted artifacts.

The result is stunning. A fully interactive spherical image that shows the night sky if one was suspended in space where the earth should be. The Milky Way and other galaxies can be explored, zoomed in on and panned around. As if that was not enough, the interactive image can be overlaid with the stellar constellations sky map.

This is a truly amazing achievement. And now to find a HD projector and blank wall...