uranologist have released the turgid digital icon of the night sky ever made — to be mined for future discovery — and it would evidently take 500,000 high - definition TV to regard it in its full halo .
It is actually a aggregation of millions of image taken since 1998 with a 2.5 - metre scope atApache Point Observatoryin New Mexico . The undertaking , called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , is now in its third phase angle , calledSDSS - III .
Altogether , the ikon in thenewly released collectioncontain more than a trillion pel of data , covering a third of the sky in slap-up item .
“ This is one of the biggest bounty in the history of science , ” says SDSS squad member Mike Blanton of New York University in New York City . “ This data will be a bequest for the long time . ”
Biggest 3D map
data point released previously by the resume has already led to many approach , including the uncovering oftiny , blur galaxiesorbiting the Milky Way , and maps of thelarge - scale structureof the world .
The third phase of the survey part in 2008 . It is now focus on assess the light spectrum of objective seen in the Brobdingnagian double .
One projectwithin the survey get to mensurate spectra for more than a million galaxy . These spectrum reveal how far off the galaxies are , and by measuring so many of them , astronomers will create thebiggest 3D map of the universeyet . Analysing the map will allow them to poke into the nature of the mysteriousdark energythat is think to be accelerating the expansion of space .
Another SDSS - III projectwill take spectra of thousands of star to expose planet and brown dwarfs in orbit around them .
you may browse images from SDSShere . The results were herald on Tuesday at a encounter of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle , Washington .
Update : If you ’re give birth trouble accessing the images from SDSS due to their servers being overloaded , trythisorthismirror . [ Thanks , Adrian ! ]
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