Photographer spends 12 years, over 1200 hours for a panorama of the Milky Way

JP Metsavainio, an astrophotographer from Finland has released a picture of the Milky Way panorama on his Twitter account. He has spent 12 years and 1250 hours capturing this phenomenal picture. The outcome of his hard work is the most spectacular work of astronomy. The photographer began his work in the year 2009 and has completed the work in 2021.

JP Metsavainio spent 12 hours capturing image

It took him twelve years to finalize the mosaic of the image. The photo he has released is about 100,000 pixels wide, it has 234 individual mosaic panels stitched together and 1.7 gigapixels. JP Metsavainio in his blog has given two reasons for taking such a long time to capture the picture. He said,

The reason for a long time period is naturally the size of the mosaic and the fact, that image is very deep. Another reason is that I have soht most of the mosaic frames as an individual compositions and publish them as independent artworks.

The California Nebula, NGC 1499, can be seen at bottom left of the large mosaic image.  Credit: JP Metsavainio    www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com

For the picture, his processing workflow remained constant. He said that the total exposure time is over 1250 hours and some of the frames has more exposure time than others. In the picture, there are some extremely dim objects visible like an extremely dim supernova remnant W63, the Cygnus Shell. It lays about six degrees up from the North America nebula and it can be seen as a pale blue ring. He said,

I spent about 100 hours for this SNR alone.

Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by an ionized elements, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue.  Credit: JP Metsavainio    www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com

According to the blog of the photographer, the other large and faint supernova remnant in Cygnus can be seen at the near right edge of the image. G65.5+5.7 is as large as the more famous Veil nebula. There are over 60 exposure hours for this SNR alone. 

A closeup from the main image shows the Sharpless 124 at up and the Cocoon nebula with a dark gas stream at bottom. Credit: JP Metsavainio    www.astroanarchy.zenfelio.com

Equipments used for the picture

He has used several optical configurations for this mosaic image during the years. Up to 2014, he used an old Meade LX200 GPS 12" scope, QHY9 astrocam, Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics and Baader narrowband filter set. After 2014, he started using 10-micron 1000 equatorial mount, Apogee Alta U16 astro camera, Tokina AT-x 200mm f2.8 camera lens and the Astrodon 50mm square narrowband filter set. He has shot many details with a longer focal length by using Meade 12" scope with reducer before 2014. He after then started using Celestron EDGE 11" and reducer. Quider camera has been Lodestar and Lodestar II. Netizens have praised the dedication of the photographer.