Skip to main content

4.4 million galaxies are visible in this new map of the night sky

▶ Watch Video: NASA launches world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope yet

A new map of the night sky has just been made public for the first time. The photo, which was published by scientists at Durham University, shows an incredibly detailed picture of millions of galaxies and space objects.

Many of the 4.4 million galaxies captured in the photo hold massive black holes, or are generating new stars at high speeds. Most of the specks of light visible in the image are billions of light years away from Earth, according to the scientists. Some of the rarer objects captured in the image include colliding galaxies and flaring stars in the Milky Way.

cygloop-colour.png
LOFAR

The researchers used a European radio telescope to capture 3,500 hours of observations — that’s enough data to fill 20,000 laptops. They discovered almost one million new objects.

“Each time we create a map our screens are filled with new discoveries and objects that have never before been seen by human eyes,” astronomer Timothy Shimwell of ASTRON and Leiden University said in a statement. “This release is only 27% of the entire survey and we anticipate it will lead to many more scientific breakthroughs in the future.”

coma-rgb.png
LOFAR

 

“We’ve opened the door to new discoveries with this project, and future work will…post-process the data with 20 times better resolution,” Durham University scientist Dr Leah Morabito added.

The James Webb Space Telescope epoch begins

In the history of humanity, there have been profound moments when, in our quest to understand the universe, we made quantum leaps in our discoveries and resulting knowledge. Our quest began when our ancient ancestors first looked at the star-studded night sky, and might have noticed that some moved.
Read Next Story