Milky
Way edge on,
"Paranal and Gegenschein"
The
fisheye image below is the first one ever taken to show the full sky
and the Milky Way all around the horizon.
© Stéphane Guisard
"Los Cielos de Chile"
This kind of images can only be taken at locations where one of the two galactic poles passes at zenith. That is, places on Earth with Latitude -27° to get the Southern Galactic Pole at zenith and places with latitude +27° to have the Northern Galactic Pole passing at zenith. In my case, I took the image from Paranal Observatory, Northern of Chile to get the Southern Galactic pole at zenith. I mage the image in September 2008 and first published it in October 2008. According to several astrophotography experts and astronomers, this is the first time such a picture is done.
I made several Virtual reality shows from this fisheye image, they can be found here for a 900x600 pixels view and here for a wider, 1200x600 pixels view.
A full screen version with music (courtesy Damien Bouic) is available here.
They show the sky as one would see it with the naked eye from Paranal. We can see on these virtual reality shows and one the fisheye image :
- The four brightest galaxies of our sky : The Milky Way, visible 360° around the horizon, the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Andromeda Galaxy.
- The dim and normally hard to observe light of the Gegenschein at zenith, showing the good quality of Paranal sky.
- Orion constellation, near the horizon, with Orion and Rosette Nebulae and Barnard loop.
- On the horizon, Paranal Observatory with its Laser Guide Star
- Opposite Paranal, to the East just below Orion constellation, is Armazones Mountain 20km away and "backlighted" by the light pollution coming from Escondida copper mine more than 100km away.
- .....etc
After seeing the fisheye image below, you should (=must") see the 900x600 pixels Virtual Reality Show ,the 1200x600 pixels Virtual Reality Show. or the full screen version with music. If you liked them you can dowload one of the following .mov file (to be read with Quicktime) for your personal use : download a .mov version of the virtual reality show
