This 3-Dimensional panoramic view of the entire sky reveals the distribution of galaxies
beyond our Milky Way galaxy. The image is constructed from a database of over 1.6 million galaxies listed
in the survey's Extended Source Catalog; more than half of the galaxies have never before been catalogued.
The image shows the structure of the Universe at progressively larger distance (redshift) cuts, starting with the Milky Way (z = 0), passing through the Local Supercluster (Z < 0.01) and outward to the most distant galaxies that are clearly resolved by 2MASS.
Distance is represented by the color, where a "redshift" is deduced for each galaxy based on the Ks-band flux (assuming L* properties) or the actual redshift if it exits in NED. Roughly 100K sources, or 8% of the total XSC galaxies have measured redshifts. The pixels represent the integrated Ks-band flux of sources along the Galactic line of sight, color-coded by their redshift: where blue corresponds to the nearest galaxies (z < 0.02), green at moderate distances (0.02 < z < 0.04) and red the most distant galaxies.
Here is a
chart showing the Galactic orientation and location of Large Scale Structure in the local Universe.
Links
[Last Updated: 2004 Jan 30; by Tom Jarrett]
