Biggest-ever image of night sky released
January 12th, 2011 - 9:14 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt
New York, Jan 12 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Astronomers are moving closer to creating a 3-D map of the universe.
As part of that project, images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey of SDSS have been put together to produce the biggest ever image of the night sky. The work which consists of 1.2 trillion pixels covers about a third of the night sky.
The research has been going on since 1998 to try and get as much images from the sky as possible. The multicolored images have been taken from the sky since that time using just a single 2.5 meter telescope that is installed in New Mexico.
All the images that have been taken over the period have been put together to create the work. The first two parts of the project called the SDSS-I and SDSS-II surveys were completed earlier and the SDSS-III was commenced on July 2008 until it completed on December 2009.
An astronomer of New York University, Michael Blanton told a press conference during the meeting of the American Astronomical Society that, “What makes this a really special moment is that this release really completes the mission of the SDSS camera that’s been going on for 11 years.”
The task of the SDSS has now come to an end but the researchers say that it will still be left to take more images.
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