“Sloan Digital Sky Survey”

A slice through largest-ever three-dimensional map of the Universe. Earth is at the left, and distances to galaxies and quasars are labelled by the lookback time to the objects (lookback time means how long the light from an object has been traveling to reach us here on Earth). The locations of quasars (galaxies with supermassive black holes) are shown by the red dots, and nearer galaxies mapped by SDSS are also shown (yellow). The right-hand edge of the map is the limit of the observable Universe, from which we see the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – the light “left over” from the Big Bang. The bulk of the empty space in between the quasars and the edge of the observable universe are from the “dark ages”, prior to the formation of most stars, galaxies, or quasars. (Anand Raichoor, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland and the SDSS collaboration)

Astronomers Create Largest 3D Map of the Universe

May 24, 2017

A team of astronomers working with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) created the largest ever three-dimensional map of the universe. Released along with an accompanying study, the astronomers say the new map is the first to exclusively use the positions of quasars to chart the significant structures of the Universe. “Because quasars are so […]

Universe Dying?; Seals Use Voice Recognition; Bacteria Helps Smokers Quit

August 13, 2015

Astronomers Say our Universe is Dying Is our universe slowly dying? An international group of astronomers, who studied more than 200,000 galaxies and precisely measured the energy produced within a large portion of the cosmos, have confirmed that a section of the Universe is generating about half as much energy as it did two billion […]

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. (NASA/JPL)

Science Scanner: Milky Way Bigger than Thought, Hydrothermal Activity on Saturn Moon, New Way to Fight Cavities & Gum Disease, Dwarf Galaxy Surprises Scientists

March 12, 2015

Milky Way May Be Much Bigger than Thought Our galaxy, the Milky Way may be much bigger than previously thought, up to 50 light-years further across, say researchers. Researchers from the United States, China and the United Kingdom came to the conclusion after reviewing data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing […]

New Research Reveals Ominous Future for Universe

November 3, 2014

A team of British and Italian scientists recently conducted research that suggests an ominous future for the universe. In a paper just published by the journal Physical Review Letters, the scientists said a review of new astronomical data found that dark energy (a theoretical form of energy that cosmologists believe is responsible for the accelerated […]

Scientists Discover Universe’s Largest Known Structure

January 14, 2013

Scientists have found the largest known structure in the universe, a cluster of galactic cores so vast it would take four billion years for a spacecraft traveling at the speed of light to cross it. The sighting challenges a theory from Einstein which suggests such a massive object shouldn’t exist in the universe. A quasar […]

Science Images of the Week

September 19, 2012

Tag: “Sloan Digital Sky Survey”