An international research team has released a giant 2D map of the universe, the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
Conducted by the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) of the NAOC and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), the study paves the way for the upcoming new-generation dark energy spectroscopic survey.
Nearly 200 researchers from the NAOC and the DESI jointly observed galaxies and analysed the data over the past six years. They stitched together the observed images and formed a giant 2D map of the universe.
The map covers half of the sky, digitally sprawls over 10 trillion pixels and contains about 2 billion objects.
“We know that the universe is accelerating expansion today. According to existing theories, the power driving the expansion is dark energy. However, we don’t know the nature of dark energy so how can we study it? The way we’ve used is to measure large-scale redshifts of galaxies and the 3D distribution of the cosmic materials,” said Zhao Gongbo, deputy director of the NAOC, also a team member of the DESI.
The DESI will perform a five-year mission to obtain the redshifts of millions of galaxies and construct the largest 3D universe, which is expected to unveil the mystery of dark energy.
