An international team of scientists has launched a new giant map of the universe in two dimensions. It is a reconstruction of 10 trillion pixels and contains around 2 billion objects.
Almost 200 researchers have worked to create this great image of the cosmos, according to the china Xinhua news agency. Over the past six years, they have observed galaxies and analyzed the data together to finally stitch the observed images together. These represent the ninth data set of the project Legacy Surveys.
A spiral galaxy, seen with the Sky Viewer tool at legacysurvey.Org/viewer. Sky Viewer uses data from DESI’s 2D mapping effort and satellite imagery.
The effort has been possible thanks to the image catalog Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) and the instrument Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), led by the University of California (USA). BASS is a collaboration between the National Astronomical Observatories of China, (NAOC) and the University of Arizona (USA).
Better understand the expansion of the universe and dark energy
The new map represents a previous and necessary step to better understand what is known as dark energy. The universe is constantly expanding, something that seems to be accelerating. The explanation behind such a dilation is found in what astronomers call dark energy, Zhao Gongbo, deputy director of the NAOC and also a member of the DESI team, explained to Xinhua.
Dark energy accounts for about 68% of the universe and it remains a great mystery. Possible explanations for its nature range from the fact that it is a property of space to that it supposes a new dynamic fluid. What is clear is that more and better data is needed to answer the unknowns.
To that end, DESI will undertake a five-year mission to build a much larger map of the universe in 3D. By measuring changes in large-scale electromagnetic radiation emission from galaxies, astronomers can describe the three-dimensional distribution of cosmic materials and reveal how dark energy impacts cosmic expansion.
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