A galaxy imaging session has captured more than 3 billion celestial bodies, in one of the largest space surveys ever, with a dark-energy camera mounted on a telescope in Chile.
The US National Science Foundation’s NoirLab released the survey results this week, two years following the camera focused on the southern hemisphere sky.
The images show great detail, indicating that the majority of the Milky Way’s bodies are stars.
It also includes the number galaxies Small, distant stars that may have been confused with individual stars.
In the context, the study’s lead researcher Andrew Sedgary, a Ph.D. student in physics at Harvard University, said, “It’s like taking a group photo, and being able to distinguish not only between each individual, but also the color of his shirt.”
“Despite many hours of staring at images containing tens of thousands of stars, I am not sure my brain has grasped the magnitude of these numbers,” Sedjari added in an email.
This latest survey now covers 6.5 percent of the night sky, according to the researchers. The results include a survey published in 2017 that cataloged two billion celestial bodies, most of them stars.
Sedjari said there are no further updates to this particular survey, but future telescopes will address larger areas of the sky.
With hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, the cosmic picture book is likely to grow in size.
(Associated Press)
