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ouranos

The Milky Way

in Hyper High Definition

Boarding to our galaxy – Early 2024

IT IS SAID THAT HERMES CARRIED HERACLES TO HEAVEN AT HIS BIRTH, BROUGHT HIM TO THE BREAST OF HERA AND THAT SHE SUCKLED HIM. WHEN HERA SAW THIS, SHE DROPPED HIM WITH A JERK, AND FROM THE EXCESS MILK THAT LEAKED OUT, THE MILK STREET WAS FORMED.

ERATOSTHENES, THE CATASTERISMS, CHAP.44

1st mention of the Milky Way in a mythological text in History

AN INVITATION TO TRAVEL, TO MARVEL,
TO DISCOVER THE MILKY WAY

The Milky Way has fascinated mankind since the dawn of time. This great formation crosses the sky of the whole world, inspiring myths and legends of many civilizations, which try to give it an origin, a meaning. With the progress of astronomy and technology, we now know that the Milky Way is actually our galaxy, a huge group swirling on itself, composed of hundreds of billions of stars, drifting in an infinitely larger universe. It contains a diversity of magnificent objects: nebulae of various shapes, remnants of stars or supernovas that exploded thousands of years ago, clusters of stars, huge clouds of dark dust … The Milky Way is a real artist’s painting in perpetual evolution.

Nowadays it’s possible to view our galaxy through many applications, software or thousands of photos of the night sky. But we cannot see it in a photo as a whole, at a glance, with details.

As surprising as it may seem, all sky applications display our galaxy either in a simulated way, or by showing only certain areas of the sky in photos, or in different wavelengths (infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) from our view. These photo displays can also be in low or medium definition, or even unavailable, which makes them very difficult to access and enjoy the details they contain.

Zoom, navigate and loose your mind
between stars, dark and bright nebulas, galaxies, clusters
in a 13,5 billion pixel photo mosaic of the milky way (world record)
available on this website in Q3 2023

Samples images from Orion Constellation and the center of the Milky Way

Orion and Taurus Wide Field Prototype – a 220 millions pixel, 200 frame mosaic at 50% of the final resolution

Demonstration of the feasibility of processing a large area in the sky with significant bad gradient difference (merging Chile and France).

Annotated version, with names of constellations stars, dark or bright nebulas and galaxies

the new WORLD’S LARGEST IMAGE OF OUR GALAXY

2000

Number of fields to cover the Milky Way

13,5 Gigapixels

Based on the current generated sub-mosaics (51x +/- 325 million pixels)

More than 10000 Gb

The amount of data (raw images, calibration, intermediate files) generated for the project

OURANOS x GAIA : SCIENCE AND BEAUTY

The position of stars, galaxies, nebulae, clusters… will be exact, thanks to the extremely precise “star map” of the Gaia space observatory. The colors of the celestial objects will be calibrated to correspond as much as possible to the real colors in the visible and near infrared range.

This image will be not only beautiful or mindblowing : it will be true and accurate.

a photographic journey

The OURANOS project is a huge technical challenge.

It involves the acquisition and assembly of 2000 images of the sky together, taken at specific times of the year, taking into account a multitude of parameters. Height of the photographed zones in the sky, rotation of the Earth, atmospheric conditions, size of the images, ideal exposure time… nothing must be left to chance. A preparatory work of 3 months was necessary to imagine the method of shooting and to organize the travels to two professional observatories, in France and in Chile.

Today, the mosaic processing phase involves learning new methods on specialized software and overcoming the technical limitations imposed by the software or image files. Astrophotography software does not allow the mosaic image to be created in a single operation, so we have to get round the problem with new image management engineering techniques. To use an aviation analogy, this project will break “the sound barrier” : a possible challenge, but a very difficult one !

More than 1,000 hours (and counting) of learning, research and development, trials and failures combined with more than 1,000 hours of pure computing time on a professional workstation specially designed for this project have already been spent since October 2022.

The project is taking time, but it has been designed from the beginning to last for years and to be used in many challenging applications. Astrophotography is a journey, not a sprint.

The goal of this project is to propose the largest visible color mosaic photograph of the Milky Way in the world (about 13,5 billion pixels), the most resolved (sampling at 6″/px, sufficient to see the Lyra nebula as a colored ring), astrometrically and photometrically correct, with very limited processing artefacts, made by one astrophotographer, accessible at scale 1 without any compression or limited preview. The image will be available in its largest and most detailed definition possible by technical means to be presented soon.

More exciting news to come from all the aspects of the project as soon as I can talk about it !

NORTHERN HEMISPHERE

ST-VÉRAN OBSERVATORY

Pic de Château Renard – FRANCE – 2930m altitude

One of the highest observatories in Europe, with one of the best skies in the world.

SOUTH HEMISPHERE

OBSTECH OBSERVATORY

Rio Hurtado – CHILE – 1750m altitude

In the foothills of the Andes, under one of the “TOP 5” purest skies in the world. 10km away from the Vera C. Rubin and Gemini observatories

They are part of the adventure

Jean-François Gély (photographer), Sébastien Brouillard (director of the AstroQueyras observatory), Vincent Suc (co-director of Obstech), the AstroQueyras and Obstech teams for their welcome on site, Marc Rabuteau (Digit-Access), David Malattia (photographer)

ABOUT THE CREATOR

Maxime Oudoux – Professional Astrophotographer, amateur astronomer

Passionate about astronomy since his early childhood, Maxime merged his practice of photography and astronomy to achieve true portraits of the sky and the Earth through a magnificent discipline called Nightscapes.

4 of his photographs have been honored by NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of the Day, 3 in Sky (APOD’s Nomination); finalist in the Photo Nightscape Awards 2021 as well as a shortlist in the last International Earth and Sky Photo Contest of 2017. You can see his images in the French national astronomy magazine “Ciel & Espace” or in several French national media.

He is a specialized technical editor for the French renowned website “Les Numériques”, a speaker at the workshops of the “Rencontres du Ciel et de l’Espace” in Paris (the biggest astronomy exhibition in Europe) and at the “Salon de la Photo” in Paris.

He is an ambassador for the Samyang/Rokinon lens brand and works in partnership with Benro, Tokina, Slik and Vaonis.

CONTACT

Questions or requests about the project from stargazers, medias or for business inquiries ?

Feel free to contact Maxime.