APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
A Slice Through an Artificial Universe
Explanation: We live in the era of humanity when most of our Universe is being mapped . To help understand these maps , astronomers computationally estimate the appearance of several possible candidate universes, to which maps of the real Universe can be compared. Pictured above is a slice through one of these artificial universes, displayed so that each part of the universe is seen at the same time after the Big Bang . The above map corresponds to an area nearly ten billion light years across. Highlighted in red are filaments that each contain thousands of galaxies , while darker regions are nearly de void of galaxies. Our good-sized Milky Way Galaxy would hardly be visible on this map.
| Date | June 23, 1998 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: J. Colberg (MPIfA, Germany) & The Virgo Consortium |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |