500,000 High-Def TVs Are Required to View the most important Digital Image of the Night Sky [Space]

Jan 11th 2011
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Astronomers have released the biggest digital image of the night sky ever made-to be mined for future discoveries-and it can apparently take 500,000 high-definition TVs to view it in its full glory.

It is de facto a set of millions of images taken since 1998 with a 2.5-metre telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. The project, called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is now in its third phase, called SDSS-III .

Altogether, the photographs inside the newly released collection contain more than a trillion pixels of information, covering a third of the sky in great detail.

” It really is one of many biggest bounties inside the history of science,” says SDSS team member Mike Blanton of latest York University in Big apple City. ” This information might be a legacy for the ages.”

Biggest 3D map

Data released previously by the survey has already ended in many advances, including the discovery of tiny, dim galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, and maps of the large-scale structure of the universe.

The third phase of the survey started in 2008. It really is now specializing in measuring the light spectra of objects seen inside the huge image.

One project in the survey aims to measure spectra for more than a million galaxies. These spectra reveal how far-off the galaxies are, and by measuring so a lot of them, astronomers will create the biggest 3D map of the universe yet. Analysing the map will allow them to probe the nature of the mysterious dark energy it really is regarded as accelerating the expansion of space.

Another SDSS-III project will take spectra of thousands of stars to find out planets and brown dwarfs in orbit around them.

You can browse images from SDSS here . The effects were announced on Tuesday at a meeting of the yankee Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

500,000 High-Def TVs Are Required to View the most important Digital Image of the Night Sky [Space] New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the effects of human endeavour set within the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.