A 340 Megapixel Picture of the Center of Our Galaxy

The picture above is a greatly reduced version of the galactic center mosaic produced by Stéphane Guisard, a world-renowned astrophotographer and an engineer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Guisard combined 52 sky images from a small telescope that were taken under the exceptionally clear, dark skies of the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile, to produce the 24,000 by 14,000 pixel image.

For higher resolution versions, visit the ESO Gallery. Interested in downloading the full size mosaic? You better have a high speed connection, because the file is over 26 Gigabytes in size.