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March is Women's History Month!

You Are Here, SuperMassive Galaxies Are There: A 3-D Flythrough Of The Universe

This amazing fly-through of the Universe is based on real data (the Sloan Digital Sky Survey). This is no Hollywood flight of fancy.

From the SDSS release page

"What really makes me proud of this survey is our commitment to creating a legacy for the future," said Michael Blanton, a professor at New York University who led the team that prepared this release. "Our goal is to create a map of the Universe that will be used long after we are done, by future generations of astronomers, physicists and the general public."

Data Release 9 is the latest in a series of data releases stretching back to 2001. This release includes new data from the ongoing SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which will eventually measure the positions of 1.5 million massive galaxies over the past six billion years of cosmic time, as well as 160,000 quasars — giant black holes actively feeding on stars and gas — from as long ago as 12 billion years in the past.

With such a map, scientists can retrace the history of the Universe over the last six billion years. With that history, they can get better estimates for how much of the Universe is made up of dark matter - matter that we can't directly see because it doesn't emit or absorb light - and dark energy, the even more mysterious force that drives the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

And it is just so beautiful to watch all on its own!

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Adam Frank was a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. A professor at the University of Rochester, Frank is a theoretical/computational astrophysicist and currently heads a research group developing supercomputer code to study the formation and death of stars. Frank's research has also explored the evolution of newly born planets and the structure of clouds in the interstellar medium. Recently, he has begun work in the fields of astrobiology and network theory/data science. Frank also holds a joint appointment at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, a Department of Energy fusion lab.