( CNN ) -- The name is already taken , but `` The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy '' might be a fitting title for a new interactive view of the Milky Way unveiled this week by the European Southern Observatory . Hundreds of photos taken with a regular digital camera , along with computer crunching , formed this panorama . The 800-million-pixel panorama shows an edge-on view of the plane of our galaxy , complete with points of interests such as the 12-billion-year-old , star-packed globular cluster Omega Centauri and the beautiful , reddish Rosette Nebula . Want to stay closer to home ? The panorama also points out familiar landmarks such as Jupiter , noting it 's the third-brightest object in our night sky after the moon and Venus . For a bit of a head-rush , you can choose to zoom in and click on `` Tour Destinations , '' which will take you on a trip from one end of the galaxy to another , stopping at your selected point of interest . Users can explore the image in magnificent detail , uncovering millions of individual stars forming a dustlike haze , or superimpose a map of the different constellations in the sky . The beautiful panorama is the first to be released as part of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project , which seeks to `` link the sky we can all see with the deep , 'hidden ' cosmos that astronomers study on a daily basis , '' according to ESO . The image is composed of almost 1,200 photos , which were taken by French astrophotographer Serge Brunier with a regular digital camera from ESO observatories at La Silla and Paranal in Chile and from one of the Canary Islands . `` I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to , with its constellations , its thousands of stars , with names familiar since childhood , '' Brunier said . The images were then crunched into the single panorama using special software , an effort that took about 340 computing hours to finish , according to the ESO . You can chart your own trip across the Milky Way at GigaGalaxyZoom.org . The next GigaGalaxy Zoom image will be released Monday .
The 800-million-pixel panorama shows an edge-on view of the plane of our galaxy . Users can zoom in and tour destinations such as globular cluster Brunier . The image can be explored in magnificent detail , showing three of individual stars . The image is the third of millions to be released as part of the the European Southern Observatory project .