2013 March 25

Planck Maps the Microwave Background
* Image Credit: European Space Agency, Planck Collaboration
https://www.esa.int/
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck

Explanation:
What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest surface known -- the background sky left billions of years ago when our universe first became transparent to light. Visible in all directions, this cosmic microwave background is a complex tapestry that could only show the hot and cold patterns observed were the universe to be composed of specific types of energy that evolved in specific ways. The results, reported last week, confirm again that most of our universe is mostly composed of mysterious and unfamiliar dark energy, and that even most of the remaining matter energy is strangely dark. Additionally, Planck data impressively peg the age of the universe at about 13.81 billion years, slightly older than that estimated by various other means including NASA's WMAP satellite, and the expansion rate at 67.3 (+/- 1.2) km/sec/Mpc, slightly lower than previous estimates. Some features of the above sky map remain unknown, such as why the temperature fluctuations seem to be slightly greater on one half of the sky than the other.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130325.html

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

Planck finds no new evidence for cosmic anomalies

Science & Exploration

06/06/2019

ESA’s Planck satellite has found no new evidence for the puzzling cosmic anomalies that appeared in its temperature map of the Universe. The latest study does not rule out the potential relevance of the anomalies but they do mean astronomers must work even harder to understand the origin of these puzzling features.

Planck’s latest results come from an analysis of the polarisation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation – the most ancient light in cosmic history, released when the Universe was just 380 000 years old.

The satellite’s initial analysis, which was made public in 2013, concentrated on the temperature of this radiation across the sky. This allows astronomers to investigate the origin and evolution of the cosmos. While it mostly confirmed the standard picture of how our Universe evolves, Planck’s first map also revealed a number of anomalies that are difficult to explain within the standard model of cosmology.

The anomalies are faint features on the sky that appear at large angular scales. They are definitely not artefacts produced by the behaviour of the satellite or the data processing, but they are faint enough that they could be statistical flukes – fluctuations which are extremely rare but not entirely ruled out by the standard model.

Alternatively, the anomalies might be a sign of ‘new physics’, the term used for as-yet unrecognised natural processes that would extend the known laws of physics.

Read more:
>>> https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_finds_no_new_evidence_for_cosmic_anomalies

Credit:
ESA/Planck Science Exploration

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

2011 June 14

The Universe Nearby
* Credit: 2MASS, T. H. Jarrett, J. Carpenter, & R. Hurt
https://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/

Explanation:
What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows nearly 50,000 galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) in infrared light. The resulting image is anincredible tapestry of galaxies that provides limits on how the universe formed and evolved. The dark band across the image center is blocked by dust in the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Away from the Galactic plane, however, each dot represents a galaxy, color coded to indicate distance. Bluer dots represent the nearer galaxies in the 2MASS survey, while redder dots indicating the more distant survey galaxies that lie at a redshift near 0.1. Named structures are annotated around the edges. Many galaxies are gravitationally bound together to form clusters, which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters, which in turn are sometimes seen to align over even larger scale structures.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110614.html

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

2023 July 5

A Map of the Observable Universe
* Image Credit & Copyright: B. Ménard & N. Shtarkman; Data: SDSS, Planck, JHU, Sloan, NASA, ESA

Explanation:
What if you could see out to the edge of the observable universe? You would see galaxies, galaxies, galaxies, and then, well, quasars, which are the bright centers of distant galaxies. To expand understanding of the very largest scales that humanity can see, a map of the galaxies and quasars found by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from 2000 to 2020 -- out to near the edge of the observable universe -- has been composed. Featured here, one wedge from this survey encompasses about 200,000 galaxies and quasars out beyond a look-back time of 12 billion years and cosmological redshift 5. Almost every dot in the nearby lower part of the illustration represents a galaxy, with redness indicating increasing redshift and distance. Similarly, almost every dot on the upper part represents a distant quasar, with blue-shaded dots being closer than red. Clearly shown among many discoveries, gravity between galaxies has caused the nearby universe to condense and become increasingly more filamentary than the distant universe.
!>> https://mapoftheuniverse.net/

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230705.html

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

2014 May 12
Illustris Simulation of the Universe
* Video Credit: Illustris Collaboration, NASA, PRACE, XSEDE, MIT, Harvard CfA;
https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/mark-vogelsberger/
https://www.illustris-project.org/people/
https://prace-ri.eu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.xsede.org/
https://www.nasa.gov/
* Music: The Poisoned Princess (Media Right Productions)
https://www.mediarightproductions.com/

Explanation:
How did we get here? Click play, sit back, and watch. A new computer simulation of the evolution of the universe -- the largest and most sophisticated yet produced -- provides new insight into how galaxies formed and new perspectives into humanity's place in the universe. The Illustris project -- the largest of its type yet -- exhausted 20 million CPU hours following 12 billion resolution elements spanning a cube 35 million light years on a side as it evolved over 13 billion years. The simulation is the first to track matter into the formation of a wide variety of galaxy types. As the virtual universe evolves, some of the matter expanding with the universe soon gravitationally condenses to form filaments, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. The above video takes the perspective of a virtual camera circling part of this changing universe, first showing the evolution of dark matter, then hydrogen gas coded by temperature (0:45), then heavy elements such as helium and carbon (1:30), and then back to dark matter (2:07). On the lower left the time since the Big Bang is listed, while on the lower right the type of matter being shown is listed. Explosions (0:50) depict galaxy-center supermassive black holes expelling bubbles of hot gas. Interesting discrepancies between Illustris and the real universe do exist and are being studied, including why the simulation produces an overabundance of old stars.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140512.html

* i converted and compressed this video to mp4 -crf 28 with ffmpeg

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

Illustris simulation overview poster. Shows the large scale dark matter and gas density fields in projection (top/bottom). The lower three panels show gas temperature, entropy, and velocity at the same scale. Centered on the most massive cluster, for which the circular insets show four predicted observables. The two galaxy insets highlight a central elliptical and a spiral disk satellite (top/bottom).

Credits:
Illustris
www.illustris-project.org

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

Most detailed simulation of our Universe

The Illustris simulation is the most ambitious computer simulation of our Universe yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe. The simulations were run on supercomputers in France, Germany, and the US. The largest was run on 8,192 compute cores, and took 19 million CPU hours. A single state-of-the-art desktop computer would require more than 2000 years to perform this calculation.

Find out more at:
http://www.illustris-project.org

Publication:
"Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation", Vogelsberger, Genel, Springel, Torrey, Sijacki, Xu, Snyder, Bird, Nelson, Hernquist, Nature 509, 177-182 (08 May 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13316

Music:
moonbooter (http://www.moonbooter.de/)

Institutes:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, University of Cambridge, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, Space Telescope Science Institute

-The Illustris Collaboration

https://www.illustris-project.org/

* i converted and compressed this video to mp4 -crf 33 with ffmpeg

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA #education

The Celestial Zoo' poster 👉 https://bit.ly/celestialzoo

A circular plot that shows in detail astronomical objects of various distances and sizes thanks to the use of a logarithmic scale. The solar system is located in the center. Towards the edges, the scale is progressively reduced to show in detail the most distant and biggest structures of the observable universe sphere.

A high-resolution download: https://payhip.com/b/ZWy5S

Quality metal plate: https://displate.com/artist/pablocarlosbudassi/maps-of-the-universe

Many things are commented on this image. Most people say it’s the eye of the universe looking back at us, making us feel small and humble, or maybe making us feel great and lucky. Lucky to be able to stare at the cosmic beauty. With a bone-deep certainty that in all this diversity we cannot be the only ones!

https://pablocarlosbudassi.com/2021/02/the-infographic-and-artistic-work-named.html

#space #universe #map #astronomy #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA #ESA