The Milky Way Project
Well, the idea was born the moment I first shot our Milky Way Bulge from the Negev desert, to have a memo picture of that night. That moment I looked at that image on a small screen of my DSLR and a question rose in my mind - " Wouldn't that be a cool and amazing, to see the whole Northern side of our galaxy in one image? ".
I had no slightest idea of what I was getting my self into.
Of course that kind of a images were done before by the professionals with professional equipment and much of a dedicated time to it, but that was the whole point for me. I'm just an amateur astronomer with one lens and one camera, that posed to me a Challenge and I love those a lot. Challenges are meant to succeed .
So the project have begun. I calculated the field of view I was getting with my Canon T3i and Tamron 17mm lens and compared it to the size of the Milky Way visible to me. It became clear , that to make it possible, it have to be a project for a year, because of the seasoning changes of the sky and be able to capture the summer and winter sky's.
Also it were clear to me , that the Panorama view would be consist of 5 total frames.
So here is the single frame:
That is one of the single frames used in composition and that would be the Middle Frame of the project. Because the project is 5 frame in total, there would be additional 2 frames added to the left of that image and to the right. The idea is to show the Panorama from our Northern Galactic Bulge to the Constellation of Puppis. On that frame Milky Way lies from the star Sadr on the most left and to the most right of Cassiopeia constellation, where Double Cluster and Soul Nebula are visible.
Next is the composition of two frames:
Here is the additional frame was added to the left side of the center and it shows the part of a Great Rift of our Milky Way Galaxy. On the left side could be clearly visible the brightest star Altair, which is a part of a summer asterism called The Summer Triangle.
Unfortunately, the imaging session started in the late summer of 2012 and i missed the opportunity to image the frame which would contain the part from the Bulge to the Altair, so that part moved to the imaging plan of 2013.
Next is the composition of three frames:
Here is the additional frame was added to the right side of the center and it shows the part from the Soul Nebula to the constellation of Gemini and the beginning of constellation of Orion.
Unfortunately, that frame is discarded due to it's quality. You see that white blob between the Pleiades and Taurus constellation? Well, that's Jupiter and there is no way it should have produced such a halo. That was due to a very poor seeing and thin layer of clouds of the winter nights and that frame were ruined.
Although the frame is ruined and have to be re-shot, I still completed that 3 pane mosaic for the sake of a beauty and the result came out somewhat acceptable. As of date that this was written, the project moved to the year 2013 for completion.
