NASA have recently released a truly unique view of our home galaxy, well at least the part we can see being in it ourselves. The uniqueness lies in the resolution and hence the size of the Spitzer infrared image composed of more than 800,000 frames, making the resolution around 400,000 by 13,000 pixels or 5 gigapixels (5,000 megapixels that is)… just a bit more than your average digicam is capable of.

On the official Spitzer site you can download a lower resolution poster version or any of the 16 24752×13520 pixel pictures that makes up the large image and read more about the features in it. I really recommend you to use 2 minutes to read this, as it is really good and precise, and you will be able to go discover all the amazing things yourself.

You probably don’t want to download all these enormous images unless you have a monster computer and want to see how it handles it, but then you’re lucky that Alien Earths has, for the less masochistic of you, made an interactive version where you can zoom and pan around the whole thing very easily. They even placed some bookmarks with well known sights, so you can find your way around.

I have a warning though. If you’re anything like me this will consume a lot of your time, so don’t look at the links unless you have the time or a nice boss. It is truly amazing to be able to get this kind of overview of our home galaxy, and get to know it a bit better. It’s a very common thing to look so far ahead that you forget about all the amazing things that are so close.

They also covered this on slashdot, with the usual lively discussion.