3 ms·

The largest map of the universe reveals over 800k galaxies

15 points by thunderbong 1y ago

tiagod 1y ago
Just imagining the number of unique worlds these 800k galaxies contain really blows my mind. Especially when there are probably a lot more to be discovered.
- pantulis 1y ago
  And consider these are 800k galaxies mapped in the subtending angle of three moons in the sky...
  - vitorbaptistaa 1y ago
    If Claude is correct, these 0.54 square degrees represent 0.0013% of the full 41,253 square degrees of the sky (4*pi steradians).
    - tiagod 1y ago
      I checked the math and it is correct! So assuming this is a representative sample, there would be 800000/0.000013 ~= 61 billion galaxies in the celestial sphere. According to Wikipedia, "It is estimated that there are between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe." Edited: Off by some orders of magnitude.
Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
Huh, I thought there would be more. Like billions of galaxies.
- merek 1y ago
  They only observed an area of sky approximately the size of "three full moons" > By using the data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s 6.5‑meter (21-ft) mirror, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have surveyed 0.54 square degrees of sky, which is equivalent to the area of three full moons when viewed from Earth. Charting nearly 800,000 galaxies, the COSMOS-Web dataset covers almost 98% of cosmic history.
- ShinTakuya 1y ago
  There are. The count is gotten by extrapolating from randomly selected areas of sky. This is more like another detailed picture of a small patch of sky.
merek 1y ago
Interactive images can be found here https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/fitsmap/ https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/fitsmap/
CapricornNoble 1y ago
The unimaginable vastness of the universe is so humbling. I love the effort of science teams to make their work accessible to the public too. EDIT: one of the galaxies in the article highlight photos (the top right one) sure has a structure that just feels "artificial" to me.
IAmBroom 1y ago
One thing that fascinates me about science fiction is how uniformly it tends to restrict itself to our galaxy. FTL? I have friends who think that's coming this century. Colonization on Mars? Probably only a little harder than those moonbases I saw on 1970's TV shows. But when Star Trek made a whole series about a ship being sent too far away to ever return (in one lifetime), they only sent it to the other side of our galaxy. Anyway... the Fermi Paradox still doesn't apply to things 100s of MLYs away, that we can barely size up, much less get TV channel programming from.

15 points by thunderbong 1y ago

Just imagining the number of unique worlds these 800k galaxies contain really blows my mind. Especially when there are probably a lot more to be discovered.

pantulis 1y ago
And consider these are 800k galaxies mapped in the subtending angle of three moons in the sky...
- vitorbaptistaa 1y ago
  If Claude is correct, these 0.54 square degrees represent 0.0013% of the full 41,253 square degrees of the sky (4*pi steradians).
  - tiagod 1y ago
    I checked the math and it is correct! So assuming this is a representative sample, there would be 800000/0.000013 ~= 61 billion galaxies in the celestial sphere. According to Wikipedia, "It is estimated that there are between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe." Edited: Off by some orders of magnitude.

Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago

Huh, I thought there would be more. Like billions of galaxies.

merek 1y ago
They only observed an area of sky approximately the size of "three full moons" > By using the data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s 6.5‑meter (21-ft) mirror, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have surveyed 0.54 square degrees of sky, which is equivalent to the area of three full moons when viewed from Earth. Charting nearly 800,000 galaxies, the COSMOS-Web dataset covers almost 98% of cosmic history.
ShinTakuya 1y ago
There are. The count is gotten by extrapolating from randomly selected areas of sky. This is more like another detailed picture of a small patch of sky.

merek 1y ago

Interactive images can be found here https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/fitsmap/ https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/fitsmap/

CapricornNoble 1y ago

The unimaginable vastness of the universe is so humbling. I love the effort of science teams to make their work accessible to the public too. EDIT: one of the galaxies in the article highlight photos (the top right one) sure has a structure that just feels "artificial" to me.

IAmBroom 1y ago

One thing that fascinates me about science fiction is how uniformly it tends to restrict itself to our galaxy. FTL? I have friends who think that's coming this century. Colonization on Mars? Probably only a little harder than those moonbases I saw on 1970's TV shows. But when Star Trek made a whole series about a ship being sent too far away to ever return (in one lifetime), they only sent it to the other side of our galaxy. Anyway... the Fermi Paradox still doesn't apply to things 100s of MLYs away, that we can barely size up, much less get TV channel programming from.