The largest ever 3D map of 1 million distant galaxies is obscured by the dwarf galaxy neighbors.
The naked eye can see the amazing features of the Southern Hemisphere's sky. Because the dwarf galaxies take up a large area of the night sky, they block our view of many more distant galaxies. Astronomers tend to avoid this part of the sky when looking at the billions of galaxies in the universe.
Jessica Craig, a member of the map-building team, said in a statement that the Magellanic Clouds block part of our view of objects further out. We are helping to fill in the gaps in our map of the universe by overcoming that.
The Hubble Space Telescope image shows waves rippling through the stars.
Craig and her colleagues were able to see through the gaps between the stars by taking pictures of the Magellanic Clouds. The team used the VISTA at Paranal Observatory to make these images.
Because they appear fainter and redder than they are due to dust, they are difficult to see. The team used a radio telescope to look through the dust between Earth and distant galaxies. The GASKAP data allowed the scientists to create a detailed map of gas and dust in the Magellanic Clouds and account for the amount of "reddening" these factors cause to the galaxies they obscure.
The human eye can't distinguish between close objects and distant ones due to the sheer number of light sources. The team was able to use data from the star-mapped Gaia observatory to categorize each light source because stars shift in position while distant galaxies remain in the same place.
The distinction between distant and relatively nearby stars was confirmed using a second technique. The wavelength of light from distant galaxies is stretched due to the expansion of the universe. Astronomers call this redshift because visible light is longer in wavelength.
The redder the object's light appears, the farther away it is from us. The team could remove stars from their data.
The astronomy team used machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a 3D map of an estimated one million galaxies.
The team presented their findings at the National Astronomy Meeting in the U.K. in July.
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