Biggest 3-D Map of the Universe

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/biggest_3d_universe_map.html

Tue, 16 May 2006 - Astronomers from UC Berkeley have created the most comprehensive three-dimensional map of the Universe ever published. Amazingly, this map is merely a slice containing 1/10th of the northern hemisphere. It contains 600,000 galaxies and extends out 5.6 billion light-years into space. This map allows astronomers to study evidence for dark energy - the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

Surprisingly enough, the center of the universe is composed of some yarn, a few buttons, an empty Sara Lee pie tin, an old Bob Marley 'Catch a Fire' CD, some plastic safety scissors, a stack of Better Homes & Garden magazines Dec '71 thru Sept. '75, some used up porn and a jar with Hitler's brain in it.

Well, 6010, actually. :evilgrin:

You're exagerrating! :evilgrin: Me Too!
The Professor

...in that range. In fact, it sounds like for many of those galaxies, they've more estimated the distance than measured it.

However, hopefully this 'map' will get more in focus as the centuries go by...

they measured the distance to those galaxies, even though not 100% accurate.

For very distant galaxies, they use the Hubble constant to convert from recession velocity (due to expansion of Universe and measured via the doppler shift) to distance after calibration using closer in galaxies.

From the article:

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey astronomers worked with colleagues on the Australian Two-Degree Field team to average the color and redshift of a sample of 10,000 red luminous galaxies, relating galaxy color to distance. They then applied these measurements to 600,000 such galaxies to plot their map.

Padmanabhan concedes that "there's statistical uncertainty in applying a brightness-distance relation derived from 10,000 red luminous galaxies to all 600,000 without measuring them individually. The game we play is, we have so many that the averages still give us very useful information about their distribution. And without having to measure their spectra, we can look much deeper into space."

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but to me it reads like they actually measured a sample of 10,000 galaxies via redshift, then used those measurements to come up with the distance of the rest of the 600,000 galaxies.

Of course redshift itself is merely an indication of distance, and color can at best be an indication of redshift. So there's a large margin of error, but not so large that it is useless.

lots of underlinings and shocking words with exclamations marks after them in the margins. This particular copy of "The Sirens of Titan" has passed through 313.0897 hands since it was first printed, was last sold for 10 cents in a no-longer-existing used bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and is known to be the extra bit of matter needed, in the overall picture of things, that tips the balance between Universe Expanding and Universe Collapsing. Astronomers call it the T-SOT equation. Upshot...

...it is now collapsing. Everything, that is. All of it. Goodbye, time forward. Goodbye, everything. Nice knowing ya. Thanks for FEMA, and thank our lucky stars we won't be needing emergency services any more!

ON EDIT:

Forgot the link to the program!

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

It's a real pain to fold.

I haven't had any coffee yet this morning, so that's where I'll lay the blame.

People who understand astronomy have a better appreciation of life on earth, IMFO.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jara sang.

aaaahhhhhhh......


http://area51specialprojects.com/MovieClips/030811-hubble.htm