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- if they used X-Rays for that, why does Event Horizon Telescope use millimeter waves?by ck2
- Woah, cool. Why is the map so uneven? Does this reflect differences in how frequently such objects occur, or does it have to do with how the scanning works?by andai
- Various types of 'lumpiness' in the observable universe are huge topics of research.by kjs3
- Perhaps including one that is scooting across the universe (Dr Becky): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHLF6sgLdrs&t=4sby zabzonk
- Is the distribution because of taking time to look/equipment? or is that actually related to the distribution (clumps in various directions).. I would guess the lines and things are "that's where we've looked" vs. "that's all there is".. I wonder if it's gonna line up with the CBR.
- How different is "mapping supermassive black holes" from "mapping galaxies"?by csallen
- I tend to assume that the obvious gridded point pattern is a sky sampling artifact - but it would be far more interesting if it's a real thing.by RagnarD
- Interesting how anisotropic it is. Naively I would have assumed it would be roughly symmetrical
- Nature is a painting, not a pattern.by honeycrispy
- I think that's more a result of our incomplete/inconsistent scanning.by monocasa
- Interesting indeed but might be an artifact of regions being surveilled and Milky Way disk both containing more easily detectable holes and obscuring some areas with the dust clouds (I am not an astrophysicist or astronomer)by mynegation
- As others say, this is probably mostly artifacts from the survey design (e.g. eROSITA data rights), but the Galactic plane definitely limits things too.
This video of the DESI galactic map shows the directions that are possible to survey with optical light, in a very cool way:
by epistasis - Anyone ever worked with data from SDSS? What have you done with it? I imagine it's a gold mine for university students. I took an astronomy class and was able to plot the largest structures in the universe from their data, which was cool but pretty basic. I've loved astronomy all my life and I've always wondered if there was anything more one person or a small team could do with SDSS data. I took the class in 2010 so I imagine there are more possibilities now with AI?by colkassad
- What are the "gridded" regions in the middle? Is that some kind of measurement artifact?by gwerbin
- If you're talking about the purple blotches, that's a map of the regions of the sky that have been targeted for observation. It's not the actual SMBH density.by epistasis
- The number of massive maps of the universe in recent years are absoultely fascinating, and have reignited my childhood interest in astronomy and cosmology.
These maps consist of a large number of statistical observations derived from images, and that lines up with all the data analysis I've used in the past decades in genomics. (Most DNA sequencing data comes from image analysis, coincidentally!). And the plots I see in these papers are looking increasingly like the plots I've produced over the past 20 years, so I'm thinking maybe it would be fun to download a few TB of atlas and see if I can reproduce their plots...
Thanks for everyone who works in this field, it's fantastic work that's reshaping our very understanding of reality.
by epistasis - Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.
- We also released the 2nd half sky catalogue of the eROSITA X-ray survey at the same time, for 1.5 years of operations, in collaboration with SDSS. Here is a sky map and 3D plot with redshift: https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8215311/news20260731
This almost doubled the number of known X-ray sources to 2 million.
by xioxox - > "almost doubled the number of known X-ray sources"
That's a fantastic achievement!
by chrisweekly