Astronomers launch an “atlas of the universe”, in addition to the Milky Way. A large telescope installed in Australia helped astronomers create an “atlas of the universe”.
About 1 million distant and unknown galaxies have been mapped. The work was conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), with the launch of space Google Maps.
The Australian Square Kolometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) carried out its first survey of the entire southern sky in a decade, using still generations of telescopes. Thus, all the images were used to create this new map, where it is possible to interact and see details of distant galaxies.
Atlas of the universe was produced with an advanced telescope.
The Australian telescope has a large field of view, with receivers designed by CSIRO, capable of taking panoramic photos in more detail than before. In short, it is enough that 903 images are combined for him to be able to map the entire southern sky. On the other hand, some equipment seen in other parts of the world requires thousands of images to do something like that.
“It’s really a game-changer,” said astronomer David McConnell, who led the CSIRO study of the southern sky at the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory. “It is more sensitive than previous research that covered the entire sky like that, so we see more objects than we have seen in the past,” explained McConnell.
In fact, some objects were found that were not observed in previous studies and that now attracted attention. Then, this equipment can repeat the procedure within a short time. The research was praised by Australian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews.
“ASKAP is a big technological development that puts scientists, engineers and industry in the driver’s seat to lead the discovery of deep outer space for the coming generation,” said the minister.
The material is expected to assist in future studies. The atlas of the universe has managed to catalogue some different stars, which suffer explosions and may serve for future in-depth studies. So it can be useful to understand how stars, galaxies and black holes evolve.
There are millions of star-like points seen on the map, each representing a distant galaxy. In total, more than 3 million were caught, of which 1 million had never been seen. This is possible thanks to CSIRO’s custom hardware and software, which processes 13.5 exabytes of data to generate the map.
In 2020, the IBGE census in Brazil would be carried out, but the pandemic was postponed to 2021. Scientists will be able to pursue and utilize the data collected in a very similar way to the census. Then, statistical analysis and much more can be done.