Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe (newscenter.lbl.gov)
59 points by NKosmatos 2 hours ago
Direct link to Legacy Survey Sky Viewer: https://viewer.legacysurvey.org
Razengan a minute ago
Could this be used for a new Elitelike game?
doodlebugging an hour ago
That's impressive. Though I think there's too much space on this plane. I'm wondering whether it is actually a 2D view since it obviously isn't planar.
To paraphrase Samuel L Jackson - "I have had it with this m'f'ing space on a plane! Everybody strap in I'm about to open some f'in' windows."
Proceeds to crank open an array of telescopes to get another 3D perspective of a 4D universe so we can project it onto our 2D viewing devices as if that were reality.
Towaway69 42 minutes ago
I wonder how many of the red points/stars are black hole stars[1]
[1] https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-typ...
antonvs 5 minutes ago
Not many people know this, but the actual universe is 3D, so this map is misleading.
br0ceph 21 hours ago
is there anyway to download the entire map, and play with it locally
micromacrofoot an hour ago
5.6 trillion pixels uncompressed is somewhere in the range of 16TB
but check out https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/#PGC3097688 and https://datalab.noirlab.edu/data/legacy-surveys
cheesemonk66 10 minutes ago
This is beautiful and terrifying. Thank you for sharing.
ionwake 17 minutes ago
i note the hyperspace bypass is missing
fercircularbuf 18 hours ago
Wow, this is humbling
sambapa an hour ago
In what ways? Galaxies are just fat fucks, they don't do no philosophy, play piano or shitpost.
Towaway69 39 minutes ago
If you squint, look at just the right portion, at just the right zoom level, the stars line up and spell out "thanks for all the fish".
sambapa 32 minutes ago
cwmoore an hour ago
Not this data, but from nearby 3D star map with rotations:
therobot24 a day ago
make sure you watch the youtube video embedded in the website, it adds some real perspective of just how massive this is
Snoeprol 26 minutes ago
Yep and the examples are really cool!
zuzululu 44 minutes ago
why is there so many weird flat lines is that an artifact?
this is fascinating wish there was a 360 VR version of this
truly immense scale
dylan604 19 minutes ago
back when I was playing with making VR content, this is one of the first things I did by using an 8K rectilinear image from NASA. Mapped it to a sphere and lined up Polaris at the zenith, and then just had one of the best nights of stargazing I had ever had!