Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Flight Through the Universe

NASA ^ | August 13, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What would it be like to fly through the universe? Possibly the best simulated video of this yet has been composed from recently-released galaxy data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Every spot in the above video is a galaxy containing billions of stars. Many galaxies are part of huge clusters, long filaments, or small groups, while expansive voids nearly absent of galaxies also exist. The movie starts by flying right through a large nearby cluster of galaxies and later circles the SDSS-captured universe at about 2 billion light years (a redshift of about 0.15) from Earth. Analyses of galaxy positions and movements continues to bolster the case that our universe contains not only the bright matter seen, like galaxies, but also a significant amount of unseen dark matter and dark energy.

[SunkenCiv]

[Video Credit: M. A. Aragón (JHU), M. SubbaRao (Adler), A. Szalay (JHU), Y. Yao (LBN, NERSC), and the SDSS-III Collaboration]

[SunkenCiv]

• The Beatles - Across the Universe (Full video / HD)

  February 1968 alternate take of the song, appeared on Anthology 2 in 1996.

join or quit list APoD 'blog post new APoD topic Astronomy Picture of the Day topic & keyword Astronomy Chat, Bloggers & keyword Science Chat, Bloggers & keyword NASA's APoD archive Calendar 1995-present APoD on your desktop

[no-to-illegals]

Thanks SunkenCiv. When viewed from the animation perspective the universe appears crowded. Not many voids.

[TexasCajun]

Amazing.

[Happy Rain]

Far out man! Instead of stars passing by you got galaxies—really helps put the size of the universe in perspective.

What would have been real cool if in the video we got real close to one of the galaxies and skimmed over it for a while.

How fast are we going? Like warp factor 12?

[dagogo redux]

Simply wonderful - thanks for posting.

‘Course, only on earth did intelligent life ever develop . . .

[the invisib1e hand]

[BitWielder1]

I found the perfect vacation spot! It's right there in the movie, you can't miss it.

That's lovely. When I look up in the sky I don't really get a good sense of depth even though I know it must be there.
Computer flythroughs like this helps me visualize it.
Thank You for posting.

[Sergio]

bkmk

[eggman]

I think they missed a couple. Then again, my screen may not have been big enough to hold them all.

[SunkenCiv]

[ geek alert! geek alert! ] The warp factor in Star Trek is speed of light times the square of the number; one of the little tidbits one notices is, for example, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Sulu starts counting at “warp 2” — warp 1 is exactly the velocity of light, and the end-run around the Einstein limit is that warp 1 is off-limits. Sooooo, warp 12 would be 144 times c; also in ST4:TVH, timewarp is accomplished by a warp 10 (100 times c) slingshot trajectory around the Sun, an arbitrary figure required by the needs of scifi. :’)

[cripplecreek]

The good news is that we've discovered life on mars. The bad news........

[TheOldLady]

Looks as if the TV shows got the view from a starship all wrong.

That’s a wonderful video! The way it will truly look when we have warp drive. ;-P