A Photographer Spent 12 Years Making This Massive Image of the Milky Way By Grainger Laffan, Zenger News On 5/13/21 at 4:05 PM EDT A Finnish artist who turned his camera skyward 25 years ago has completed an unprecedented image of the Milky Way. Jukka-Pekka Metsävainio, who goes by J-P, began shooting the project in 2009, and it took 12 years and 1,250 hours to make the photo, which is 100,000 pixels wide and comprises 234 individual panels stitched together, featuring millions of celestial objects. J-P is one of the few to document photons that traveled millions of years through space with such clarity and dedication to detail.