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SYFY WIRE Bad Astronomy

Zoom in - and in and IN - on an Austrian glacier

By Phil Plait
BadAstronomyHero

This is so cool - photographer André vd Hoeven visited the Pasterze glacier in Austria and took quite a few pictures of it. Quite a few. He then stitched them together to make this astonishing 10,000 x 8600 pixel version that you can pan and scan and zoom:

[You may need to refresh the page if you don't see the pannable and scannable image directly above this sentence.]

The scale's a bit hard to grasp. So do this: go to the bottom left corner, where you can see a little splash of blue. That's where the glaciers is breaking up, exposing cleaner ice. Zoom way in on that spot using the control buttons on the bottom right of the picture. See the people standing there near the open water? That'll give you a sense of scale. Keep your eye on them, and then zoom back out.

Yikes. Das ist ein groÃer Gletscher!

This is actually only an 87 megapixel version; André told me his full-blown 185 megapixel shot was too big to upload!

If André's name sounds familiar, it's because he also created the amazing mosaic of the night sky in Cygnus I posted a couple of weeks ago. His skill is formidable.

I hope he keeps taking pictures of glaciers, too. I am honestly concerned there may not be a whole lot of time left to do so.

Image credit: André van der Hoeven.


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