Advertisement

Explore the Milky Way the easy way - by going to Clapham Common

Live in London and want to see what the Milky Way looks like? Head to Clapham Common in the evening - not because the park gives you a better chance of seeing into space, but because there's now a 26ft luminescent billboard showing the Milky Way in all its glory.

The advertising hoarding has been put up by O2 to tie in with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S5 - see what they did there?

It uses a technology - known as Starpath - developed by UK company Pro-Teq, whereby an elastic polymer coating is sprayed onto a surface to provide a luminous effect. Created last year, it was first trialled on pathways in Christ's Pieces park in Cambridge.

200,000 crystals are embedded in the polymer, arrayed to provide a moderately accurate depicition of the centre of our galaxy. This is the first instance of the technology being applied to a billboard.