The 2.5 gigapixel image is a composition of images rather than a single image. TNO developed a sophisticated approach to merge the many images - all 600 of them. The photos were taken automatically using a modern consumer camera and a powerful 400 mm lens. The camera was positioned automatically using a computer-controlled pan-tilt unit. Each of the 600 photos overlaps, an arrangement that ensured very accurate positioning and enabled us to stitch the images automatically into one giant image of 78,797 by 31,565 pixels. The most difficult tasks were processing these large images and comparing the overlapping images.
