Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have created the most detailed map ever produced of the cosmic web, the enormous structure that connects galaxies across the universe
#JWST #JamesWebbTelescope #cosmicWeb #darkMatter #largeScaleStructureOfTheUniverse
Large-scale Structure in COSMOS-Web: Tracing Galaxy Evolution in the Cosmic Web up to z ∼ 7 with the Largest JWST Survey, Hatamnia, Hossein, Mobasher, Bahram, Taamoli, Sina, Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S., Casey, Caitlin M., Akins, Hollis B., Brinch, Malte, Chartab, Nima, Drakos, Nicole E., Faisst, Andreas L., Finkelstein, Steven L., Franco, Maximilien, Giddings, Finn, Gozaliasl, Ghassem, Hadi, Ali, Haghjoo, Aryana, Harish, Santosh, Ilbert, Olivier, Jablonka, Pascale L., Jin, Shuowen, Khostovan, Ali Ahmad, Koekemoer, Anton M., Laishram, Ronaldo, Liu, Daizhong, Maturi, Matteo, McCracken, Henry Joy, Martin, Crystal L., Moscardini, Lauro, Scognamiglio, Diana, Shuntov, Marko, Toni, Greta, de la Vega, Alexander, Weaver, John R., Yang, Lilan
A DESI Milestone
Yesterday the Open Journal of Astrophysics published a paper by Porredon et al which will feature in the usual Saturday round-up. That paper, which is based on the First Data Release from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) reminded me that I should mention that DESI recently reached an amazing milestone – it has now mapped the positions and redshifts of 47 million galaxies and quasars! There is a full press-release about this achievement here.
Here’s a little video showing how the survey works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H3diAK_KIc
There are more videos and other graphics in the press release.
Here’s a nice picture showing a thin slice through the full survey that reveals the characteristic “cosmic web” of the large-scale structure of the Universe in all its glory:
This progress is great, but it really makes me feel old. Forty years ago, in 1986, I had just started my PhD. The state-of-the-art galaxy redshift survey slice then is shown in this plot, from de Lapparent et al 1986 (ApJLett 302, L1), one of the first papers I read as a research student (I got it in 1985 as a preprint), which contains just 1,100 galaxies:
It is worth mentioning that although DESI has now covered its original target area, it will continue until 2028. You can never have too many galaxy redshifts!
#CosmicWeb #Cosmology #DarkEnergy #DarkEnergySpectroscopicInstrument #DESI #GalaxyRedshiftSurveys
Large-scale structure of the Universe: from galaxies to cosmology
30 August - 3 September 2027, Tartu, Estonia
#Universe #Cosmology #galaxies #CosmicWeb #conference #Tartu #Estonia #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #science #news
Meet MOTHRA, the thousand-eyed telescope in search of the cosmic web - The Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/science/article-meet-mothra-the-thousand-eyed-telescope-in-search-of-the-cosmic-web/
Gift link:
On the cover of the new issue of Nature Astronomy: Elongated galaxies point to warm dark matter
Image: Álvaro Pozo, Donostia International Physics Center. Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic
https://www.nature.com/natastron/volumes/10/issues/2
#Cosmology #galaxies #DarkMatter #physics #science #astrodon #nature #astronomy #news #astrophysics #simulation #cosmicweb
The #CosmicWeb is made up of large #voids delimited by long filaments of #matter at the intersection of which vast #gravitational structures are formed: #galaxies grouped into clusters.
Do their properties (mass, shape, star formation rate) preserve traces of the large-scale cosmic flows from which they originated? Find out this Thursday with Katarina Kraljic, a researcher at the @ObsStrasbourg , who studied a sample of observed and virtual galaxies : https://www.irap.omp.eu/event/the-co-evolution-of-galaxies-and-the-cosmic-web-over-cosmic-time/
"Structures cosmiques : une famille de géantes"
I was yesterday on France Culture to talk about the discovery of the Quipu Supercluster and other large scale structures.
#Cosmology #Cosmography #Quipu #QuipuSupercluster #Laniakea #LaniakeaSupercluster #SouthPoleWall #SloanGreatWall #CosmicWeb #science #astrophysics #astronomy #astrodon #radio #podcast #FranceCulture #Radiofrance
Comment Quipu, structure parmi les plus grandes, a-t-elle été identifiée ? De quoi sont composés les filaments de galaxies et de matière noire qui forment les structures de l'univers ? En quoi leur identification permet-elle de préciser notre compréhension de la cosmologie ?
Lick Observatory Damaged
I missed, until now, the news that on Christmas Day, high winds accompanying a violent storm seriously damaged the historic Lick Observatory.
The gales were strong enough to rip one of the shutters from the dome of the 36″ refracting telescope and send it crashing onto the roof of the adjacent building.
The Observatory remains closed to the public while the structural damage is assessed and repairs made. Fortunately it seems nobody was hurt and no instruments were affected.
Here’s a video of the detached shutter being removed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYooaiylVEg
The Lick Observatory is located on Mount Hamilton near San Jose in California. A donation by San Francisco millionaire James Lick enabled the construction of the 36” (diameter) refractor, the most powerful telescope in the world at the time. The Observatory was almost destroyed in 2020 by a wildfire, but the new incident is the most serious damage in its 137-year history.
As I blogged about here, the Lick Observatory played an important role in the development of our understanding of the large-scale structure of the Universe, specifically with the creation of the Lick galaxy survey prepared by Charles Donald Shane and Carl Alvar Wirtanen and published in 1967 (Publ. Lick. Observatory 22, Part 1). In my more poetic moments, the image on the left puts me in mind of W.B. Yeats: Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths.
That catalogue was still proving a useful resource well into the 1990s; I was part of various analyses of it myself, starting with this paper from 1991. It was eventually superceded by the arrival of large-scale galaxy redshift surveys, but it remaining an amazing achievement.
The Lick Galaxy survey was not performed with the 36″ refractor mentioned above, however, but by twin 20″ Carnegie astrographic telescopes housed in a different dome. As far as I know, these were not damaged in the storm.
GaiaCrisisPhil
Daniel Fischer
In the Dark
Daniel Pomarède
Stephen Sekula
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