Largest ever image of Universe released

It’s pretty hard to get your head around the size of the Universe, but this could help.

The international Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) has released the largest image of the sky ever made, mapping the Universe in more detail than ever before.

It’s been ten years in the making and you’d need 500,000 high-definition televisions to see at its full resolution, but this visualisation of all the data helps to convey its immensity.

It’s technically a collection of seven million 2.8 megapixel images, which scientists will use if to measure the distance to over one million galaxies detected in it.

They also hope 'citizen scientists' like you will get involved too as the data is open to the public.

The SDSS-III is one of the most ambitious surveys in the history of astronomy. It's a collaboration including the University of Portsmouth and uses the work of hundreds of people and a 2.5m telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

It’s already scanned a third of the whole sky and its images have been the foundation for tools like Google Sky (well worth a play if you haven’t.)

Find out more 

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