More than a QUARTER of the northern sky is mapped, revealing 4.4 million objects from galaxies to black holes in astonishing detail
More than a quarter of the northern sky above the Earth has been mapped, revealing details of 4.4 million objects raning from galaxies to black holes.
An international team of astronomers have been using the low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope, to capture details of the universe.
The map, which looks like streams of light, presents a picture of a dynamic universe, with the vast majority of objects billions of light years from the Earth.
Astronomers behind the project say the data gives fresh insight into a wide range of signals from planets and galaxies to black holes.
A composition radio (LoTSS; purple), UV (GALEX; yellow) and X-ray (ROSAT; blue) image of the Cygnus loop supernova remnant

A composite radio (LoTSS; red) and infrared (WISE; white) image of the Coma cluster which is over 300 million light years from Earth and consists of over 1,000 individual galaxies

Each dot in this picture shows the location of a hugely energetic object in our Universe. This includes black holes, galaxies with bursts of star formation, and explosive merging events between some of the Universe's largest groups of galaxies
It is a collection of radio frequency signals, captured by a number of telescopes spread across Europe, with each signal appearing as a bright yellow dot.
So far, 27 per cent of the sky has been mapped, revealing 4.4 million objects, which are being revealed to the public for the first time.
The vast majority of these objects are billions of light years away and are either galaxies that harbour massive black holes or are rapidly growing new stars.
Rarer objects that have been discovered include colliding groups of distant galaxies and flaring stars within the Milky Way.

Radio, X-ray and optical composite image of the “Whale Galaxy” NGC 4631. In this galaxy star-formation produces hot gas that is visible in X-ray (blue) as well as highly energetic particles that spiral in the galaxy’s magnetic field that are visible in the LoTSS radio image (orange)

A composition radio (LoTSS-DR2) and optical (Hubble space telescope) image of the “jellyfish galaxy” NGC 4858 which is flying through a dense medium that is stripping material from the galaxy

Each panel in this high resolution montage shows radio wavelength radiation produced when two giant clusters of 100s to 1000s of galaxies collide
To produce the map, scientists deployed state-of-the-art data processing algorithms on high performance computers all over Europe.
These were set to work processing 3,500 hours of observations that occupy 8 petabytes of disk space - the equivalent to roughly 20,000 laptops.
This is the largest data release from the LOFAR sky survey, representing about a million objects never seen before with a telescope, and four million new discoveries at radio wavelengths, the team said.
Astronomer Timothy Shimwell of ASTRON and Leiden University, described the LOFAR Sky Survey as an 'exciting one to work on.'
'Each time we create a map our screens are filled with new discoveries and objects that have never before been seen by human eyes,' he said.
'Exploring the unfamiliar phenomena that glow in the energetic radio universe is such an incredible experience and our team is thrilled to be able to release these maps publicly.'
He said it is likely the findings will result in many scientific breakthroughs in the future, after other scientists examine each of the individual discoveries.
'This will include examining how the largest structures in the universe grow, how black holes form and evolve, the physics governing the formation of stars in distant galaxies and even detailing the most spectacular phases in the life of stars.'
Durham University scientist, Dr Leah Morabito, also involved in the LOFAR project, said the work 'opens the door to new discoveries.'
'Future work will follow up these new discoveries in even more detail with techniques, which we work on here at Durham as part of the LOFAR-UK collaboration, to post-process the data with 20 times better resolution.'
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