A Flight Through the Universe
M. A. Aragón (JHU), M. SubbaRao (Adler), A. Szalay (JHU), Y. Yao (LBN, NERSC), and the SDSS-III Collaboration
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.