Largest-ever 3D map of the Universe reveals gigantic Cosmic Web

Space: the final frontier. These are the visions of DESI , it's five year mission to map the Universe and the Dark Energy contained within.

DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's) is using the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope based in Arizona to make its observations and although only 7 months into it's 5 year mission it has already mapped some 7.5 million galaxies and is expected by the end of its mission to have mapped over 35 million.

Here's what it has seen so far , each point of light in the scan is a Galaxy , each Galaxy likely home to many interesting civilisations much like our own.

The 3D aspect of the DESI map can be seen in this moving image, as the view sweeps from the constellation Virgo towards Bootes.

The current map was produced during DESI’s first seven months of operation in 2021, and it’s only just getting started. By the time its primary mission concludes in 2026, the instrument will have cataloged over 35 million galaxies, stretching as distant as 11 billion light-years. This treasure trove of data will bring to light new details about galaxies, black holes, quasars and dark energy, the mysterious force driving the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
newatlas.com...

"There is a lot of beauty to it," says astrophysicist Julien Guy from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

"In the distribution of the galaxies in the 3D map, there are huge clusters, filaments, and voids. They're the biggest structures in the Universe. But within them, you find an imprint of the very early Universe, and the history of its expansion since then."

DESI is made up of 5,000 optical fibers, each individually controlled and positioned by its own tiny robot. These fibers have to be accurately positioned to within 10 microns, or less than the thickness of a human hair, and they then capture glimpses of light as they filter down to Earth from the cosmos.

Through this fiber network, the instrument takes color spectrum images of millions of galaxies, covering more than a third of the entire sky, before calculating how much the light has been redshifted – that is, how much it's been pushed towards the red end of the spectrum due to the expansion of the Universe.
www.sciencealert.com...

Space is indeed " the final frontier" , until we discover the existence of other Universes of course.

We are as the atoms that make up grains of sand compared to the vastness of the universe.

Kinda spooky really.

If only contact with other species would happen openly. It would improve humanity's consciousness immensely. We are asleep in a coma mostly going through life and it's motions (wake up , go to work, pay bills, cook/clean etc), nevermind the covid joke that's happening.

a reply to: gortex

No, it's a Tapestry.

We've been telling people this for literally centuries...

~sigh~

some web ... looking for the spider in it ! a reply to: gortex