Videos

Fly Through the Universe Simulation

The reason why we don’t see videos of probes flying through space is that there would be nothing to see, except empty space. Stars and galaxies are so far away from each other that they would be barely visible with the naked eye. But what if… we could fly at such speeds that galaxies are a mere seconds away? That we could compress space that galaxies would be visible to the naked eye, like what we see in our beloved scifi movies? This video simulation weaves together recently-released galaxy data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to simulate a trip through space with each spot in the video representing a galaxy containing billions of stars. It’s amazing to realize just how huge the universe is.

The data apparently amount to the largest 3-D map yet of the universe:

The map, which was released Wednesday, uses new data to reveal the locations of more than a million galaxies over a total volume of 70 billion cubic light-years.

Read more at: msnbc.

via nasa