Greetings fellow astrophile!
Our own Prof. John McMahon sent along a link to what may go down as the most impressive effort by an amateur astronomer this year (and probably well into last year). Seattle-ite Nick Risinger toured the world with six synchronized astrophotography cameras to take 37,000 exposures over 60,000 miles of travel to produce one amazing image now hosted and fully interactive at his website skysurvey.org.
While the site does speak for itself, a few news sources have taken to task this astronomical feat. Links are provided below.
www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-night-sky-exposures.html
The direct link to the interactive image is media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html. It is large and takes some time to load depending on your connection. That said, it’s your galaxy. You wouldn’t want it loading too fast.