Bryce Maynard (left) and Nikita Shtarkman examine a map of the visible universe. Credit: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University
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A new map of the universe displays the span of the entire known cosmos for the first time with pinpoint world have been analyzing this data for years, resulting in thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But no one has taken the time to create a beautiful, scientifically accurate map accessible to non-scientists. Our goal here is to show everyone what the universe really is.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a pioneering effort to capture the night sky with a telescope based in New Mexico. Night after night for years, the telescope has aimed at slightly different locations to capture this extraordinarily wide perspective.
The map depicts a slice of the universe, approximately 200,000 galaxies – every point on the map is a galaxy, and each galaxy contains billions of stars and planets. The Milky Way is just one of those points, the one at the bottom of the map. Maynard put together the board with the help of former Johns Hopkins computer science student Nikita Shtarkman.
Created by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University using data extracted over two decades by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the map allows the public to discover data previously only available to scientists. Credit: Johns Hopkins University
The map is more colorful due to the expansion of the universe. For this reason, the further away an object is, the redder it appears. The first flash of radiation was emitted shortly after[{”attribute=””>BigBang137billionyearsagoisrevealedatthetopofthemap[{”attribute=””>BigBang137billionyearsagoisrevealedatthetopofthemap
“In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets,” Ménard says. “We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale.”
Ménard hopes people will experience both the map’s undeniable beauty and its awe-inspiring sweep of scale.
“From this speck at the bottom,” he says, “we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science.”