A walk through the history of the Universe - The Mundo.es

next tour (virtual only, for now) by the Universe and may have a historical guide spans the last 10,000 million years of evolution . Thanks have to give it to the Alhambra Project, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA), who created the cosmological map with more realistic three-dimensional view that exists today.

The project has achieved a level of representation of the universe high. This is something new, because the reference current knowledge, the American project Cosmos, cartogafría very deeply, but in a single region of the sky, so that it can be easily distorted interpretations if you choose, for example, an area of high density of galaxies (overdensities). “If we do a History of Human Civilization, we would analyze different societies instead of one, right?” Compares Alberto Molino, IAA researcher and team member.

To avoid these risks, Mill and his companions (among which are 16 international research institutes) have studied 8 regions far apart, with few bright stars to keep the image saturate, and away from the galactic plane. “Only then can separate the evolution of the universe with cosmic variance. Now see how they have changed reliably and distribution of galaxies in the cosmos along its history.”

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An image of telescope that is carried out for the project. | S. Pedraz

The observations were taken from the Calar Alto Observatory (Almería) with a telescope of twelve feet long equipped with two cameras, one optical and one infrared. During the same period a respected quality demanding sky conditions to prevent light pollution affect vision. In total, for each galaxy (there are half a million registered), there are 32 hours of exposure . All those thousands of seconds that have been properly integrated in order to make the final map.

The images were taken through the photometric mapping (basically a counting system consisting of light), which is fast and very accurate astronomical filters by decomposing the energy of the stars in their colors. Otherwise, crawling with classical spectroscopy generations would have taken, and the results, in the end, have been of lower quality.

Project Alhambra is a milestone in the recent history of the Spanish Astronomy , precursor of the new mapped long-range, which will help identify any other team as physical properties dominated universe earlier times: “It would be like knowing the place and conditions where the seeds were planted in a forest from the trees we see today,” said Molino.

All research data will be made freely available to the scientific community and any curious who wants to delve into the distant past of outer space. There’s also the documentary “Alhambra Survey. Atlas of the Universe” that if negotiations are successful, will air on public television.