Astro Photos with 600 Megapixel is One of the Largest

Astro photos are, by necessity, quite large if only because they document large things. What's more, compared to most photos, it's not the artistic value that counts, but the information density, i.e. how much such a photo can tell you about the object you're studying. Still, practical considerations keep the actual images, what you get to see published, quite small.

Even relatively small images can slow down a browser and eat up a lot of bandwidth. The European Southern Observatory recently unveiled a huge photo containing no less than 84 million stars, but there is no way to view it all in a browser, ESO built a special tool which enables you to zoom in on the parts you want while keeping the actual image that you see small.

The US National Optical Astronomy Observatory decided to unload one huge file on us though, a 600 million pixel, 600 megapixel photo of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation.

The supernova explosion dates to between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago and is about 1,500 light years away. The full, lossless TIFF image is 1.65 GB, the lossy JPEG is just 921.23 MB. The photo is 24,457 x 24,457 pixels and covers an area of the sky 45 times larger than the full moon.

DirectX Software Development Kit (571 MB)

Microsoft's DirectX is a free API (Application Programming Interface) that gives multimedia applications the power to work in Windows-based computers. Games that run in the Windows operating system rely on DirectX because it provides an assortment of drivers and tools that are designed to optimize the game's use of the available peripherals in the target computer. For example, when a user plugs in a joystick that normally needs drivers to run, DirectX has a generic driver that the joystick can be used, so you can enjoy your favorite games with desired game controller too.

Direct3D 11 is out and ready for use by your game today to exploit the latest in video hardware features as well as the current generation machines. Microsoft has been continuously evolving DirectX to implement latest graphics technology features and to support wide varieties of games, Display devices. After making DirectX 10 available for windows Vista here is the next version DirectX 11 with Direct3D 11. The new version of DirectX, the software behind the eye-popping 3-D visuals and immersive sound effects found in many of today's PC games.

DirectX 11 features include:

1. It's designed to be more efficient, leverage the power of today's multicore processors.
2. It's providing support for sophisticated shading and texturing techniques such as tessellation.
3. Results smoother 3-D animation, and graphics more lifelike and nuanced than ever before.

DirectX 11 Updates include:

1. High Quality HDR Post Processing.
2. Improved Tone Mapping.
3. Parallax Occlusion Mapping.
4. Improved Water Rendering.
5. Real-Time Local Reflections.
6. Contact Shadows (SSDO).
7. New Advanced Graphics Options.
8. Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra.
9. Improved Multi-GPU Support.
10. Particle Motion Blur and Shadows.