I stumbled across this today, and it is truly an amazing view of the night sky, as captured by Frenchman Serge Brunier for the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) GIGAGALAXY ZOOM project.  Brunier captured the 1200+ images that make up the composite between August 2008 and February 2009.  The end result is an 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire Milky Way!

This panorama was shot with a digital SLR and hobby telescope at two of the ESO's observatory sites in Chile, La Silla and Paranal; plus La Palma, one of the Canary Islands.
To really appreciate it, you have to go to their site and view the high-res interactive version.  Using Zoomify, you can zoom in on different segments to full-resolution.  Check it out here: www.gigagalaxyzoom.org/  They will also be releasing another image September 21st.

I seriously love this stuff.

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