The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, which will help astronomers explain the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that makes up 96 percent of the universe.
Data Release 9 is the latest in a series of data releases stretching back to 2001. This release includes new data from the ongoing SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which will eventually measure the positions of 1.5 million massive galaxies over the past six billion years of cosmic time, as well as 160,000 quasars — giant black holes actively feeding on stars and gas — from as long ago as 12 billion years in the past.
DR9 is available at: http://www.sdss3.org/dr9.
WATCH A FLY-THROUGH BY CLICKING BELOW:
An extraordinary video!
Is there any exageration of the per-galaxy scale as compared to the between-the-galaxies scale in this video? The galaxies seem rather large compared to the space between them, but that may simply be because I’ve never before seen this quality of an image to compare it to.
Thanks.
Yes, the galaxy sizes have been increased by a significant factor for visibility. They otherwise would be dots except for times when you were flying rather near a galaxy. (If I recall correctly, that factor is around 50x).
Thank you.