Photopic Sky Survey

Astronomy has a rich and extensive history of work done by both amateurs and professionals. Given its long history and the ease of access the study of the night sky can be done by anyone with the desire to ponder what lies in the great beyond. This has become even more true with the advent of mass production of telescopes and reasonably priced high performance digital cameras. With the additional aid of advanced computer software, amateur astronomers can take images that used to be relegated to the realm of professional astronomers.

Such is the case with today's example of a superb amateur project the Photopic Sky Survey. An amateur astronomer from Seattle, Nick Risinger, spent a year collecting 37,400 exposures of the night sky to make a complete map of the sky at 5 Gigapixels. The resultant image shows what the sky looks like in natural colors, the colors our eyes would naturally see if they could see faint enough objects. This is in contrast to the majority of professionally made images which have their colors changed to emphasize things of scientific interest.

The survey is a stunning piece of astrophotography which illuminates what has been lost in the light pollution of modern society. While the image shows objects and features far fainter than our eye can see, it does illustrate the richness of the night sky which has been seen from time immemorial if only we stop to appreciate it. An article describing the project can be found below (thanks to my dad for pointing it out):

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015040399_nightsky12.html