Slide Title: The Milky Way

Slide Image: The Milky Way: This panoramic view of the sky has been assembled from 51 wide-angle photographs. The individual images were computer-processed and transformed to a cartesian frame based on galactic coordinates prior to assembly, thus eliminating the distortions introduced by the wide-angle lens. Subsequently, the mosiac was converted to an Aitoff projection, where the galactic equator runs horizontally through the image. The familiar constellation of Orion lies near the right edge, below the galactic equator. The bright objects in the right half of the image, below the band of the Milky Way, are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, our nearest neighbor. 

Image Source: Axel Mellinger, University of Potsdam, Germany
(NSF permission to use: YES. Permission form received.)

Slide Source: NSF and Robert Kirshner