Milky Way Panorama

The computation of coordinates, the drawing of the coordinate grid and the marking of the star positions have been carried out by Martin Kesküla, while the drawing of the Milky Way clouds themselves has been made by Tatjana Kesküla. The appearance of the Milky Way was created by spraying the fainter regions with a retouching sprayer and by brush painting of the brighter regions. When the picture was ready, the compass drawn stars appeared as unnaturally sharp points in comparison with the more realistic "hand worked" background of the Milky Way. Thus, it was necessary to diffuse the stars using the same painting method as was employed for the Milky Way. During the work with the Milky Way regular checks were made by superimposing a transparent paper marked with the Pannekoek isophotes.

The work took almost two years, and was completed in 1955. The final beautiful piece of art (measures 1x2 meters), still belonging to Lund Observatory, has become well known to astronomers all over the world from countless reproductions.

The projection used here, called Hammer- or Hammer-Aitoff projection, is widely used by astronomers. The Gaia-project publishes its full sky diagrams using the Hammer- projection. Note however that Professor Lundmark himself described the Milky Way panorama to have an Aitoff projection in the publication Casiopeia from 1955, page 91.  He seems to have been unaware of the difference between the two.

Following the precise location of the Galactic center, the system of Galactic coordinates was re-defined at the 1958 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, in particular resulting in a substantial shift of the longitude scale. Since the Lund Milky Way panorama was produced before that change, it uses the old Galactic coordinates. nowadays labeled b-I and l-I.

The scientific point of such a projection of the sky lies mainly in the fact that observable phenomena of different peculiarities frequently are found distributed symmetrically relative to the Via Galactea, the Milky Way, both for natural reasons concerning objects belonging to our galaxy (also known as the Milky Way), and because gas and dust along the Via Galactea obscures the objects behind.

Of course, this all-sky survey distorts the constellations as we are used to see them. However, starting from left we find constellations Auriga and Perseus, and the bright parts in Cassiopeia and Cepheus. The large dark parts of Cygnus and Aquila can be recognized somewhat to the left of the centre, where Sagittarius is found. Towards right from the centre, the Milky Way passes in order Centaurus, Crux, Carina and Canis major. The weaker parts further to the right are Monoceros and Gemini, and farthest to the right we touch Auriga again. In the lower half of the map, we can easily recognize the Large Magellanic Cloud, and relatively far to the left, just below the Milky Way, the Andromeda nebula, known as a galaxy similar to our own, can be seen.

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