The Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) was biggest ever realized with Hubble Space Telescope (HST). For 2 years the survey observed and photographed [SkyWalker] a small portion of the sky. Within 2 square degree over 2 million galaxies were detected. By comparison, the Earths moon is one-half degree across.
Every look into space is a look back in time. COSMOS pictured 75% of universe lifetime - more than 10 billion years. It needed nearly 1000 Hubble hours to take 575 photos. All stitched together make a file of ~100GB with 100,800 x 100,800 pixels. [same with 3508 x 3508 pixel]
The COSMOS survey collaboration involved almost 100 scientists in a dozen countries. The project also incorporated major commitments from other observatories around the world, including the VLA radio telescope, ESO’s VLT in Chile, ESA’s XMM X-ray satellite, and Japan’s 8-meter Subaru telescope in Hawaii.
An international team of scientists made further analysis and assembled a three dimensional map of the distribution of dark matter. This mysterious component neither emits nor reflects light, but accounts for 80% of the total mass in the Universe. Using the COSMOS photometric redshift catalog scientists find dark matter builds up large scale structures and is distributed like a web.
Mapping dark matter’s distribution in space and time is fundamental to understanding how galaxies grew and clustered over billions of years. Tracing the growth of clustering in dark matter may eventually also shed light on dark energy, a repulsive form of gravity that would have influenced how dark matter clumps.
ESA Space Science: First 3D map of the Universe’s dark matter scaffolding
NASA: Hubble Maps the Cosmic Web of “Clumpy” Dark Matter in 3-D
Large Structures and Galaxy Evolution in COSMOS at z < 1.1
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