The First Public Data Release from BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

BOSS ^ | August 08, 2012 | Paul Preuss

[Berlin_Freeper]

The Third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has issued Data Release 9 (DR9), the first public release of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). In this release BOSS, the largest of SDSS-III’s four surveys, provides spectra for 535,995 newly observed galaxies, 102,100 quasars, and 116,474 stars, plus new information about objects in previous Sloan surveys (SDSS-I and II).

“This is just the first of three data releases from BOSS,” says David Schlegel of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), an astrophysicist in the Lab’s Physics Division and BOSS’s principal investigator. “By the time BOSS is complete, we will have surveyed more of the sky, out to a distance twice as deep, for a volume more than five times greater than SDSS has surveyed before – a larger volume of the universe than all previous spectroscopic surveys combined.”

[Berlin_Freeper]

A Flight through the Universe
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. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) spectroscopic data in Data Release 9 includes 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.

[chrisser]

Fascinating video.

Has there been any research on what’s within the vast distances between galaxies?

I suppose we can’t really know, since we’re barely able to get a probe out of the solar system and even at that, the distances are almost unimaginable.

[Berlin_Freeper]

dark matter n (Astronomy) Astronomy matter known to make up perhaps 90% of the mass of the universe, but not detectable by its absorption or emission of electromagnetic radiation

Dark Matter Structure Revealed

[zeugma]

bfl

[Windflier]

"dark matter n (Astronomy) Astronomy matter known which has been postulated to make up perhaps 90% of the mass of the universe, but not detectable by its absorption or emission of electromagnetic radiation"

I know that astrophysicists are currently in love with the concept of dark matter, but for now, it's still just a theory to explain the inexplicable 'missing' matter in their measurements of the universe.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Berlin_Freeper.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Berlin_Freeper.

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