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3-D Map Adds Light Years to Concept of Universe

Posted Oct 15, 08 5:00 PM CDT in Science & Health 

(Newser) – Telescope photographs of the night sky are compelling, but it’s hard to get a feel for the heavens when you’re Earthbound. The recently completed Sloan Digital Sky Survey can help: It is a 3-D map of the area within 2 billion light years of Earth that allows the user to move through space as if by flying saucer, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Constructed from high-res digital telescope photos, the Sloan team used the red shift of stars and galaxies—an increase in the amount of red in the light an object emits that indicates its distance from earth—to find the relative distances necessary to give the map depth. The most distant quasar ever found and a “Great Wall” of clustered galaxies are among the discoveries made with Sloan data.

Source Los Angeles Times

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This photo, released by NASA shows part of NGC 253, one of brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky, easily visible with small telescopes, which is composed of thousands of young, blue stars.   (AP Photo)
This photo, released by NASA-ESA on Sept. 30, 2008, show the Hubble Space Telescope view of the NCG 3077 galaxy.   (AP Photo)
In a photo provided by NASA, the Pinwheel galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 101, sports bright reddish edges in this new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.   (AP Photo)
This composite image provided by NASA Wednesday Aug.   (AP Photo/NASA)
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space • astronomy • digital photography • telescope • Milky Way • galaxy • map


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