Astronomers have collected data on cosmic bodies into an interactive map of the observable universe

Astronomers have collected data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey for 15 years into an interactive map of the observable Universe.

The map includes many cosmic objects, such as glowing blue quasars and red elliptical galaxies. You can study the map here.

"Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, which has led to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries," said Brice Menard, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University and the creator of the map. "But no one has taken the time to create a map that would be beautiful, scientifically accurate and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal is to show everyone what the universe really looks like."

Observations from the telescope in New Mexico cover about 200,000 galaxies, each of which is filled with billions of stars and unknown worlds. The data includes many more objects than the 200,000 displayed, but if the researchers showed them all, the map would turn into an unmanageable sea of dots.

So the map is a simplification, but the alternative would just be overwhelming. The Milky Way, the 100,000 light—year—diameter galaxy we call home, is just one pixel at the base of the map.