Astro Hacker News - Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe

anigbrowl |next [-]

Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come.

Most likely. I doubt there is going to be any serious investment in astronomy over the next decade given economic headwinds and a deteriorating strategic situation. The big money will be going into defense and economic sovereignty and building/launching new high powered telescopes will not be a priority. Optical/sensor advances will be prioritized for earth observation (commercial, military, or weather/climate) and it maybe that we're in an era of diminishing technological returns already. I do expect a lot of analytical advances thanks to the combination of open datasets and AI, although it seems more likely that most of these will be in stamp collecting - interesting astronomical facts for people who are already interested in astronomy. Hard to guess if we will see challenges to prevailing cosmological theories.

zappb |root |parent [-]

Telescopes are related to spy satellites, something that will remain in high demand. The telescopes provide a good cover story for international press.

flockonus |next |previous [-]

I knew the universe was nothing but a brick wall, now we have proof!

https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=80.3728&dec=-69.4497&lay...

/jk

KaiMagnus |next |previous [-]

I've got some crazy feelings browsing this.

Are there any particularily detailed areas? But maybe the humbling reality is just: The closer we look, the more galaxies appear where we thought was black void…

hn_throwaway_99 |next |previous [-]

I read the article but didn't watch the videos yet, but I'm curious as to what would be needed to make this a 3D map. That is, I'm assuming this 2D map records the position of all of these objects in the sky, but not the distance from Earth. But I thought that calculating the distance of objects is relatively straightforward, e.g. you hear all the time "Galaxy X is 2 billion lightyears away" or whatever. Would it just be really computationally expensive to calculate the distance to all of the 4 billion objects identified in the map?

epistasis |root |parent |next [-]

They do this mostly with spectroscopy, breaking out the light by frequency. The longer the light has been travelling, the more frequency shifts into redder frequencies, because the universe is continually expanding.

But those distances are all built on top of the cosmic distance ladder (Terence Tao explaining on 3blue1brown)

https://youtu.be/YdOXS_9_P4U?is=jbkFbwWKgbn3yOjq

Maps like DESI add the 3d distances.

soulofmischief |root |parent |next |previous [-]

There are a lot of unknowns and processes that must be undone, which often require an unknown basis. Red shift, moving bodies, gravitational lensing and other processes distort light along its journey. Sometimes we don't know the exact magnitude of a star, etc. Spectroscopy helps a lot but is limited by the fidelity of our datasets.

LeBit |root |parent |previous [-]

I think it is 2D because the universe is not that thick?

doodlebugging |next |previous [-]

That's impressive. Though I think there's too much space on this plane. I'm wondering whether it is actually a 2D view since it obviously isn't planar.

To paraphrase Samuel L Jackson - "I have had it with this m'f'ing space on a plane! Everybody strap in I'm about to open some f'in' windows."

Proceeds to crank open an array of telescopes to get another 3D perspective of a 4D universe so we can project it onto our 2D viewing devices as if that were reality.

Towaway69 |next |previous [-]

For 2001 fans, Atmosphères by Ligeti[1] also works very well while doom scrolling the endless canvas that is the Universe.

[1] https://ubu.com/sound/ligeti.html

thewanderer1983 |next |previous [-]

And here I thought this was the biggest 2D map.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/01/a-logarithmic-map-of-...

Towaway69 |next |previous [-]

I wonder how many of the red points/stars are black hole stars[1]

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-typ...

pants2 |next |previous [-]

Seems like some of the most interesting objects are missing or have weird red/green artifacts, why is that?

br0ceph |next |previous [-]

is there anyway to download the entire map, and play with it locally

micromacrofoot |root |parent [-]

5.6 trillion pixels uncompressed is somewhere in the range of 16TB

but check out https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/#PGC3097688 and https://datalab.noirlab.edu/data/legacy-surveys

cheesemonk66 |root |parent [-]

This is beautiful and terrifying. Thank you for sharing.

fercircularbuf |next |previous [-]

Wow, this is humbling

sambapa |root |parent [-]

In what ways? Galaxies are just fat fucks, they don't do no philosophy, play piano or shitpost.

Towaway69 |root |parent [-]

If you squint, look at just the right portion, at just the right zoom level, the stars line up and spell out "thanks for all the fish".

sambapa |root |parent [-]

Hm, that's a good thing to consider - are there portions of the sky in which stars align into a coherent text?

Towaway69 |root |parent |next [-]

Just gotta join the dots! ;)

Or better still, develop a traveling salesman solution for visiting each star just once.

> Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was a being who became immortal after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator. After a period of total boredom, especially on Sunday afternoons, he decided to insult everyone in the entire universe in alphabetical order. [1]

So that wouldn't be just an academic exercise!

[1] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Bowerick_Wowbagger

dylan604 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Feed it to an LLM to see what it hallucinates

idiotsecant |root |parent |previous [-]

I think the odds of a character are very high, the odds of a short word are very high, the odds of a meaningful sentence are quite low, and the odds of anything more than that vanishingly small. It probably also depends on whether you're ok with viewing your assembly from an arbitrary position or if it must be from earth.

therobot24 |next |previous [-]

make sure you watch the youtube video embedded in the website, it adds some real perspective of just how massive this is

Snoeprol |root |parent [-]

Yep and the examples are really cool!

ionwake |next |previous [-]

i note the hyperspace bypass is missing

cwmoore |next |previous [-]

Not this data, but from nearby 3D star map with rotations:

https://www.ouruboroi.com/moire3

TheSpacerr |next |previous [-]

Absolutely crazy

Razengan |next |previous [-]

Could this be used for a new Elitelike game?

antonvs |next |previous [-]

Not many people know this, but the actual universe is 3D, so this map is misleading.

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zuzululu |next |previous [-]

why is there so many weird flat lines is that an artifact?

this is fascinating wish there was a 360 VR version of this

truly immense scale

dylan604 |root |parent [-]

back when I was playing with making VR content, this is one of the first things I did by using an 8K rectilinear image from NASA. Mapped it to a sphere and lined up Polaris at the zenith, and then just had one of the best nights of stargazing I had ever had!

cryptolobster |next |previous [-]

Holy shit, this is very impressive

ck2 |next |previous [-]

vaguely related to universe maps, I've been holding my breath for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch at the end of the month

It's going to do the best surveys EVER, like exponentially better

* https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/

I thought for sure DOGE was going to kill it, or even rename it after him instead

But the smallest planet Roman will be able to see would be Jupiter sized

There was however going to be another telescope scheduled to launch in 2040 that could find earth-like worlds

Fittingly enough it is called the "Habitable Worlds Telescope"

but you know what, DOGE got that one

Congress allocated $150 Million to begin development this year

Somehow the executive branch pocketed that and changed it to $5 Million instead despite having no right to do that

Yet another crime against science by this administration

Hoping new Congress in January 2027 can fix this but I doubt it as too much of the rest of the country is "on fire" that has to be put out first

So now won't be able to see its results in my lifetime

nicechianti |previous [-]

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