Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe

Posted by NKosmatos 3 hours ago

Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe(newscenter.lbl.gov)

Direct link to Legacy Survey Sky Viewer: https://viewer.legacysurvey.org

87 points | 27 comments

flockonus 21 minutes ago|

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

thewanderer1983 59 minutes ago||

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

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

Towaway69 33 minutes ago||

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

doodlebugging 1 hour ago||

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.

pants2 48 minutes ago||

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

Towaway69 1 hour ago||

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...

br0ceph 22 hours ago||

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

micromacrofoot 1 hour ago|

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 1 hour ago||

This is beautiful and terrifying. Thank you for sharing.

TheSpacerr 32 minutes ago||

Absolutely crazy

fercircularbuf 18 hours ago||

Wow, this is humbling

sambapa 1 hour ago|

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

Towaway69 1 hour ago||

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 1 hour ago||

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

Towaway69 1 hour ago|||

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 1 hour ago||||

Feed it to an LLM to see what it hallucinates

idiotsecant 1 hour ago|||

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.

ionwake 1 hour ago|

i note the hyperspace bypass is missing

More comments...