3D Map of the Universe – 2MASS Redshift Survey
Look at the 2MASS Redshift Survey that maps the distribution of galaxies and dark matter in the local universe. Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics released the most complete 3D map of the universe ever created.
The map spans a distance of 380 million light years, and took over ten years to complete.
Scientists collected data for the map by scanning near-infrared light, the spectral region where interstellar dust is most transparent. The researchers discovered over 43,00 galaxies. The map is color coded so that the most distant galaxies are red, and nearby galaxies purple.
Figure description: Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The image is derived from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC)–more than 1.5 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog (PSC)–nearly 0.5 billion Milky Way stars. The galaxies are color coded by “redshift” obtained from the UGC, CfA, Tully NBGC, LCRS, 2dF, 6dFGS, and SDSS surveys (and from various observations compiled by the NASA Extragalactic Database), or photo- metrically deduced from the K band (2.2 um). Blue are the nearest sources (z < 0.01); green are at moderate distances (0.01 < z < 0.04) and red are the most distant sources that 2MASS resolves (0.04 < z < 0.1). The map is projected with an equal area Aitoff in the Galactic system (Milky Way at center).
