Physicist makes new panorama of Milky Way

22 months, 26,000 miles and 3000 images later, Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, has created a panoramic image of the full night sky, with our Milky Way galaxy at the centre.

"This panorama image shows stars 1000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," said Axel Mellinger in a press release.

Axel used a SBIG STL-11000 camera to take images from dark-sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. Three different exposure times were used and five frames were taken at each of the exposures and filter settings.

After the photographs were taken, Axel worked with a mathematical model and spent hundreds of hours in front of a computer trying to get the images to fit together seamlessly.

The final result is an image no star-gazer can see from one place on earth.