You can zoom way, way into this incredible photo of Rembrandt's The Night Watch

Mark Frauenfelder 10:34 am Wed May 13, 2020

The Night Watch is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt. It hangs in The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Today, the museum posted the "largest and most detailed ever photograph of The Night Watch on its website, making it possible to zoom in on individual brushstrokes and even particles of pigment in the painting." I've been exploring it and it's incredible!

The Rijksmuseum’s imaging team led by datascientist Robert Erdmann made this photograph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 exposures. The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of neural networks. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapixels (44,804,687,500 pixels), and the distance between each pixel is 20 micrometres (0.02 mm). This enables the scientists to study the painting in detail remotely. The image will also be used to accurately track any future aging processes taking place in the painting.

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