Nick Risinger is a 28 year old amateur astrophotographer who has spent just over a year traveling the globe getting tiny pieces of perspective of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, after 60,000 miles have got behind him this amazing, full panaramic view of our little spot in the Universe is the result.
Behold, your home.
This is but a stamp-sized thumbnail of Risinger's work next to the fully interactive 360 mosaic you can spend hours gazing at if you go here. Nick took all of those little pieces of the picture, and stitched them all together to make one big shot of Home Sweet Home.
Interactive View of the Milky Way
It's a bit of a misnomer to say "360" because technically we can't even see the entirety of the Galaxy from side to side. And because we're viewing it from straight on to the side, we can't perceive the sweeping spiral arms either, the outermost of which is where our sun, a tiny sparkle with a chip off of a piece of dust we know as Earth makes its home, except by imagining them.
If you look carefully though, you can see where light rapidly changes in intensity gazing from the outside of the disc and working in. It could be hypothesized that you are seeing the different sized arms glowing through one another from behind the clouds of hydrogen and lithum that were the first elements of our Universe.
Nick has also done some other photos using pieces gleaned from NASA's libraries and made this composite of the Milky Way from "over the top".
Thanks to Wired Magazine for bringing this story and its amazing visuals to the water cooler.