80 gigapixel image reveals London in unprecedented detail

LONDON - An 80 gigapixel image of London shows the city in unprecedented detail and glory, qualifying as the world’s largest, highest-resolution panoramic photo that even reveals life inside buildings.

It is so detailed that users can even zoom in on the clock face at Westminster to read the time almost 2.4 km away.

Countless people at street level are observable, as well as thousands of windows, many of which reveal glimpses of life inside. The faces of any identifiable children were blurred.

A couple can be seen stopping for a cup of coffee on the street, unaware they being photographed from up to 3.2 km away, while viewers are able to zoom into office blocks across the city.

This new image, if printed at normal photographic resolution, would be 115 feet long and 56 feet high, reports the Daily Mail.

Photographed by Jeffrey Martin over three days from the top of the Centre Point building at the crossroads of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, the image reveals the highest-resolution view of any city that has ever been captured.

From this vantage point, 36 storeys up in the air, an astonishing number of landmarks, houses, skyscrapers, shops, offices, and streets are visible.

Previous attempts at world record gigapixels include a 26-gigapixel image of Paris, a 70-gigapixel image of Budapest, a 26-gigapixel image of Dresden, and Martin’s previous record holder from 2009, an 18-gigapixel spherical image of Prague.

Martin, a panoramic photographer and the founder of 360Cities.net, created the London gigapixel image from 7,886 high-resolution individual photos taken from the Centre Point building.

These thousands of photos were then stitched together as one single image on a powerful Fujitsu CELSIUS computer.