New Milky Way photo is largest astronomical image ever

BOCHUM, Germany, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Astronomers in Germany have pieced together the largest-ever astronomical image. The photo of the Milky Way features 46 billion pixels.

The new photo is the byproduct of a multiyear hunt for variable brightness objects -- a project carried out by astronomers at Ruhr University Bochum. Variable brightness objects are luminous objects that become momentarily eclipsed by other objects -- planets passing in front of stars, stars passing in front of other stars.

In scanning the Milky Way using Bochum's university observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, researchers located 50,000 new variable objects. The amount of space they scanned was so large they had to divide it into 268 sections. Each section was scanned for several days, resulting in thousands of images.

Recently, the team of astronomers compiled images of each section into a one massive photo of the Milky Way galaxy. The result is a 194-gigabyte file which researchers have put online, enabling users to zoom in and even search for specific objects like "Eta Carinae" (a star) or the "Lagoon Nebula."

The efforts to locate 50,000 new objects and compile the largest-ever astronomical image are detailed in two new scientific papers.