A Map of the Universe
Ever wonder how large everything is? Well, at least the known universe? People have been wondering for a long, long time about it. Some folks over at Princeton produced this map published in 2005, in the Astrophysical Journal [PDF], of the known universe.
We have produced a new conformal map of the universe illustrating recent discoveries, ranging from Kuiper belt objects in the Solar system, to the galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This may projection, based on the logarithm map of the complex plane, preserves shapes locally, and yet is able to display the entire range of astronomical scales from Earth's neighborhood to the cosmic microwave background. The conformal nature of the projection, preserving shapes locally, may be of particular use for analyzing large scale structure. Prominent in the map is a Sloan Great Wall of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, 80% longer than the Great Wall discovered by Geller and Huchra and therefore the largest observed structure in the universe.Feel small?
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