Sky Panorama Prints
How The Images Were Created
To create his full sky image, Axel Mellinger assembled a
mosaic from 51 images taken from Germany, South Africa
and the United States (California) over the course of 3
years. To take the individual images, he used a Minolta
35mm format camera with a 28mm wide-angle lens.
Each frame was digitized with a scanner and
processed in Axel's computer to remove lens distortion,
image flaws, and vignetting, and to map each pixel to
spherical sky coordinates. Next frames were color
matched and merged together to create a master file
which covered the entire sky.
Finally, to create each image, the master file was
projected into the flat representations such as the
Aitoff projection seen here. The resulting files
are 300 MB each!
For additional details on the mathematical techniques
used, visit
Axel Mellinger's Astrophotography Website.
How The Prints Are Made
Each image is directly printed digitally onto high quality
resin-coated (RC) paper or Translite using a color
calibrated digital LED (RGB) scanning head at 300 PPI.
Color and image density has been personally approved by
Axel and the calibrated printing ensures that the
resulting print is as close to an "original"
photographic print as you can get. The prints are
produced at a high-end commercial lab (Cuztom, Inc.) which
not only has years of experience producing quality
prints but also has an amateur astronomer running
the production.
Custom Print Sizes and
Options
Custom print sizes and options such as lamination
and mounting are also available as detailed on
our Custom Print page.
Shipping
All prints are produced and stored flat, then rolled
and shipped in tubes when your order is placed. Contact
us for special handling requests.