A Flight Through the Universe, by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This animated flight through the universe was made by Miguel Aragon of Johns Hopkins University with Mark Subbarao of the Adler Planetarium and Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, with images of the actual galaxies in these positions (or in some cases their near cousins in type) derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7. Vast as this slice of the universe seems, its most distant reach is to redshift 0.1, corresponding to roughly 1.3 billion light years from Earth. SDSS Data Release 9 from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), led by Berkeley Lab scientists, includes spectroscopic data for well over half a million galaxies at redshifts up to 0.8 -- roughly 7 billion light years distant -- and over a hundred thousand quasars to redshift 3.0 and beyond.

For more information about BOSS and the latest data release, go to http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releas....

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Nic Foster]

To move across the milky way would take light 40,000 years, and this video spans the distance of a galaxy in a millisecond or two. So, 40,000 years is 14,610,000 days, is 350,640,000 hours, is 21,038,400,000 minutes, is 1,262,304,000,000 seconds, is 1,262,304,000,000,000 milliseconds. If we say that that the "camera" in this video is spanning the distance of a milky-way sized galaxy in 1 millisecond, then it's travelling at 1,262,304,000,000,000 times the speed of light. VERY rough estimate.

[Javis586]

Needs music :)

[Malay Soni]

and at that speed, physics says u can see actually isnt it ??

[dnavarro37]

Wow, this is insane.. o-o

[blacksoilder10]

That is One Quadrillion times the speed of light, or 378 Sextillion miles per hour

[SiSTiCkA]

Diameter of Milky Way is actually 100-120kly, so your estimate should be cca 3 times higher. That means the camera is moving at 120mly per second.

[meshlife88]

This does not need music. This requires only that you observe in silent awe.

[cufi cafir]

Palestrina - Surge, illuminare

[TheFestivelights]

I think I have the math right, correct me if I'm wrong.

This reconstruction shows 400,000 galaxies, but that is only 1/ 500,000 of the known Universe that is thought to contain some 200 billion galaxies. Way beyond mind-boggling.

[nil1230]

sloan should make another video like zooming out of the earth, galaxies, galaxy cluster.etc.

[mutalix]

No words can explain the feeling I get watching this. All of which I know, experience and feel , is challenged by this video.

[chasbanner]

It's big