Telescope with 268-megapixel camera snaps its first amazing picture of deep space

[lyndonguitar]

Telescope and Camera used: Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) and a 268-megapixel camera called the "OmegaCAM".

Carina Nebula(shown below) - Full-size image is around 700MB, link to the original image here

read here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/7/3739426/very-large-telescope-survey-telescope-vst-carina-nebula

 

[McSteel]

Oh, this is so getting printed on an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 @ A0 glossy!
Great addition to the planetarium hallway wall

Thanks for the heads-up!

I wonder when Eta Carinae is gonna go off...

 

[Drone]

 

[3870x2]

Is this 700MB picture going really slow for anyone else? Been downloading at 20KBPS for about three hours now.

 

[t_ski]

Finally, an image big enough to use for Eyefinity

 

[St.Alia-Of-The-Knife]

I wonder when Eta Carinae is gonna go off...

You are gonna hope that the gamma burst isnt directed at earth

 

[MasterInvader]

Is this 700MB picture going really slow for anyone else? Been downloading at 20KBPS for about three hours now.

Downloading @ 1.2Mbps here

 

[Maban]

41% done, 22 minutes remaining. I can't wait to crash my computer with this pic.

 

[DayKnight]

Downloaded like an hour ago but damn, need SSD NOW!.

 

[McSteel]

You are gonna hope that the gamma burst isnt directed at earth

Or I could hope that it dies as a pair-instability supernova, so I don't have to worry about GRBs altogether

 

[3870x2]

Finally, an image big enough to use for Eyefinity

Yeah, if your eyefinity included 24 monitors.

 

[t_ski]

lolz

 

[Morgoth]

i can stil count pixels
also i found artifacts in the image near big stars

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Is this going to be viewable in the windows photo viewer?

 

[McSteel]

i can stil count pixels
also i found artifacts in the image near big stars

Those are more of an optical artifact, and not necessarily the CCD sensor's or the DSP's fault. Depending on the median integration interval of the CCD, the exposure is long enough to include various subtle seeing shifts of the celestial objects' images. This can usually be cleared up via image editing software, but not in all cases.

And the pixelation you mention is actually granulation, which is dependent upon the individual cell size of the CCD.

 

[Maban]

Some quick numbers I put together cause I was bored.

It would take the following number of monitors of that resolution to display the entire image.

88 2560x1600
104 2560x1440
150 1920x1200
170 1920x1080
180 1600x1200
204 1680x1050
375 1280x720

Also, it comes out to be 324 megapixels. Why the discrepancy?

 

[McSteel]

That's because the OmegaCAM uses a composite CCD sensor, not a single die. The thing would've been enormous if it were in one piece. Instead, it's comprised of 32 individual sensors, and they're not identical either.

268 mpx is just an estimate of the total usable resolution, but seeing how the picture is taken by sequentially reading out the sensors, some of them can be left out of the final stitching, or they may be used multiple times in the same image, giving more pixels than expected.

The telescope's field of view is wider than what the OmegaCAM can "see" at any given time, but it can be shifted real-time to catch the light it wouldn't be able to if it were stationary.

I actually believe that the raw image is even larger, but the team that processed it trimmed the image to exclude the parts that don't contain the nebula, and the ones that exhibit any form of easily discernible aberrations.

 

[lemonadesoda]

photoshopped