Photographing The Milky Way
Nick Risinger
Horizon - How BIG is the Universe?
Nick Risinger
Mapping the universe is a job for pioneers. Nick Risinger is blazing a trail through the American Southwest.
Nick Risinger "You have to be pretty persistent. No stopping. You've got to keep going."
Nick wants to put our entire galaxy on the map. He's on a single-handed mission, to photograph the Milky Way.
Nick Risinger "New Mexico is a great place to take photos. It's dry, it's high, and there's not a whole lot of city around here. There's a break in the weather and you get a full, almost a full night in. Other times, you only get, you know, 10% of the night. But it's all luck of the draw."
In the modern world, few of us have skies dark enough to see the Milky Way. But Nick plans to show us our home galaxy like we've never seen it before.
Nick Risinger "I'm trying to give people that broad, big-picture understanding of the entire night sky, and where they fit into that."
Our galaxy has nearly half a trillion stars. Most of them are too dim and distant to see. But Nick's cameras are more than 2000 times more sensitive than the naked eye.
Nick Risinger "If I had known how much work it would be going into it, I probably wouldn't have even started. But my personality is, once you start something, you finish it."
After two years, he's photographed 20 million stars… By stitching together more than 37,000 separate images.
