Universe captured in mind-boggling detail by Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey release SDSS-III, the most detailed picture of the universe ever made
It is the culmination of a decade spent scanning the night skies and would take half a million high-definition televisions to view at its full resolution. With more than a trillion pixels, this is the most detailed digital picture of the universe ever produced.
It replaces an image that is now over half a century old, created on photographic plates by the Palomar Sky Survey in the 1950s but still used by astronomers today.
By contrast, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's third and final release of data (SDSS-III) was created using a 138-megapixel camera attached to a 2.5 metre telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. It contains 10 times as many objects – such as galaxies, stars and nebulae – as the Palomar survey and scientists hope it will be used for decades to come by astronomers hunting for everything from dark matter to planets orbiting other stars.
"There are half a billion objects detected in this image," said David Weinberg, an astronomer at Ohio State University who worked on the SDSS image. "About a quarter of a billion stars and a quarter of a billion galaxies."
Each pixel contains data in five different colours of light. "That's green, yellow, red, redder than red and bluer than blue. We actually take five different images of each piece of the sky, looking through different filters," said Weinberg.
Each pixel is about one-three-trillionth of the sky, and overall the image covers around a third of it. "The way the telescope works, it takes its images in long stripes so that in one night it will get one big long stripe. That's why there are two big patches that are all filled in and then there are these other stripes coming out of it which are the other places where we extended into other parts of the sky but didn't fill everything in."
See the photo in zoom here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/11/universe-sloan-digital-sky-survey
Just a quick breakdown of the universe:
Staggeringly immense. Almost incomprehensible...
Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey release SDSS-III, the most detailed picture of the universe ever made
It is the culmination of a decade spent scanning the night skies and would take half a million high-definition televisions to view at its full resolution. With more than a trillion pixels, this is the most detailed digital picture of the universe ever produced.
It replaces an image that is now over half a century old, created on photographic plates by the Palomar Sky Survey in the 1950s but still used by astronomers today.
By contrast, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's third and final release of data (SDSS-III) was created using a 138-megapixel camera attached to a 2.5 metre telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. It contains 10 times as many objects – such as galaxies, stars and nebulae – as the Palomar survey and scientists hope it will be used for decades to come by astronomers hunting for everything from dark matter to planets orbiting other stars.
"There are half a billion objects detected in this image," said David Weinberg, an astronomer at Ohio State University who worked on the SDSS image. "About a quarter of a billion stars and a quarter of a billion galaxies."
Each pixel contains data in five different colours of light. "That's green, yellow, red, redder than red and bluer than blue. We actually take five different images of each piece of the sky, looking through different filters," said Weinberg.
Each pixel is about one-three-trillionth of the sky, and overall the image covers around a third of it. "The way the telescope works, it takes its images in long stripes so that in one night it will get one big long stripe. That's why there are two big patches that are all filled in and then there are these other stripes coming out of it which are the other places where we extended into other parts of the sky but didn't fill everything in."
See the photo in zoom here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/11/universe-sloan-digital-sky-survey
Just a quick breakdown of the universe:
- 78 Billion Light Years Across
[*]Hundreds of Billions of Galaxies
[*]Galaxies, like ours, are thought to contain some 100 Billion Stars.
Staggeringly immense. Almost incomprehensible...
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