A beautiful interactive map of the universe allows you to travel through space-time almost all the way to the Big Bang
A new interactive map of the universe displays the full scope of the known universe in stunning detail and extreme resolution.
Astronomers have created the map that shows the true locations and colors of 200,000 galaxies, using two decades’ worth of data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The interactive map can be downloaded for free at mapoftheuniverse.netallowing the public to access information previously available only to scientists.
“Growing up, I was inspired a lot by pictures of astronomy, starsAnd the Nebulae And galaxies, and now it’s time to create a new kind of image to inspire people,” Bryce Menard, professor in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Physics and Astronomy and co-author of the map, said in statement. “Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, resulting in thousands of scientific papers and discoveries.”
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Despite this effort, no one has taken the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to the general public.
“Our goal here is to show everyone what the universe really looks like,” said Maynard.
The detailed map was made possible by the groundbreaking Sloan Digital Sky Survey, one of the most influential surveys in history astronomy. The survey is an ambitious effort to capture a large portion of the night sky through the 2.5-meter telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Every night for eight years, the telescope pointed its 120-megapixel camera at 1.5 square degrees of sky at a time — about eight times as large as Earth. full moon – in slightly different locations, to capture a broad perspective of the universe.
Maynard and former computer science student at Johns Hopkins University Nikita Shtarkman used this data to recreate a slice of the universe containing 200,000 galaxies. Each point on the map is a galaxy with billions of stars and planets. our own galaxy, Milky Wayis just one of these points located at the bottom of the map.
Let the light pass there
One notable aspect of this cosmic map is the amazing colors created in part by The expansion of the universe. As the universe expands, wavelengths of light travel into it a land It extends to the reddest areas of the skin Electromagnetic field. The further away the light source is, the more extreme this is redshift.
At the top of the map is the first light of the universe, which was emitted about 13.7 billion years ago, shortly after the great explosionas the universe expands and cools enough to allow this electrons To form atoms with protons. The reduction of free electrons meant that photons — the individual packets of light that act as particles and waves — were suddenly not bouncing off infinitely and were instead free to travel. In an instant, the universe effectively transformed from being opaque to transparent.
At the other end of the interactive map is the Milky Way, incl Solar System and the earth as it exists today.
“In this map, we’re just a speck at the bottom, just one pixel,” said Maynard. “And when I say ‘we,’ I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way, which is home to billions of stars and planets.”
Maynard hopes that, in addition to displaying the universe in its full beauty, the interactive map will illustrate the incredible size of the universe.
“We’re used to seeing astronomical images that show one galaxy here, one galaxy there, or maybe a group of galaxies,” he said. “But what this map shows is a completely different scale. From this spot down there, we can map galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science.”
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