Lmst
Login

#Cosmography

Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-06-26

Cosmography archives

Large-scale density inhomogeneities in the Universe

by Martin Rees and Dennis Sciama (1968)
nature.com/articles/217511a0

This is Figure 3 of the paper. It shows, drawn in black against a white background, and with our location marked by a bullet at center, numerous concentric arcs, having our location as center, and distributed with a density that varies radially and transversally. A subset of these arcs represents the background density field, while another subset represents the large scale clustering of matter. A caption reads as follows: "A possible distribution of large scale clusters as seen by an observer at the centre. The contrast between clusters and the background would be less marked in the past (though the mean density was then higher) because the clusters would not have fully separated out. The shading is meant to illustrate this. Very remote objects (for example, radio sources) need not therefore appear anisotropically distributed."
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-06-18

A galactic masterpiece: a stunning image of NGC 253 has just been released by ESO @esoastronomy. If you're wondering where it is located in our cosmic neighborhood, here it is indicated in a map from our Cosmography of the Local Universe paper.

📷 eso.org/public/news/eso2510/
🗺️ doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/146/

This image shows a detailed, thousand-colour image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Regions of pink light are spread throughout this whole galactic snapshot, which come from ionised hydrogen in star-forming regions. These areas have been overlaid on a map of already formed stars in Sculptor to create the mix of pinks and blues seen here. Credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al.This is Figure 3 of the "Cosmography of the Local Universe" aforementioned article. It shows two projections of the Local Group and its immediate vicinity. Three concentric blue circles separated by 2 Mpc = 150 km s−1 lie in the supergalactic plane. The top panel is a view normal to the plane and gives the best separation of the principal groups. Solid circles, gray squares, and open triangles identify galaxies, respectively, in, above, and below the plane. The view in the bottom panel is almost edge-on to the supergalactic plane and emphasizes the concentration of galaxies in this plane and the extreme emptiness of a large region above the plane. In the top panel, the NGC 253 galaxy group is encircled, in the direction of the galactic south.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-06-17

Cosmography archives

How an infinite world may be built up

by Carl Vilhelm Ludwig Charlier (1922)
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1922

Plate 3 of the paper showing the distribution of nebulae in a Flamsteed projection in a galactic coordinate system. Notable features are the clustering of nebulae in clouds or clusters of various sizes, and their absence in what is now understood as the Zone of Avoidance, or zone of galactic obscuration, that is, the region of sky heavily obscured by foreground dust from our own galaxy the Milky Way.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-06-16

Sic transit gloria mundi and the Unapologetic Vatican in the Shapley Supercluster: a recap on cosmic flows by Avi Loeb

avi-loeb.medium.com/the-unapol

sebastian büttrichsebastian@mastodon.cc
2025-05-11

Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī: ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt
(#Marvels of #Things #Created and #Miraculous #Aspects of Things #Existing)

#Islamic #Cosmography

from

nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/histori

The world map from Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī: ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt (Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing) probably showing the middle east, howver in a stylized and symbolic way - not navigational.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-04-28

Cosmography archives

1983: Superclusters, a review by Jan Oort

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983

The title page of Jan Oort's review on superclusters.A contour plot of the number of galaxies per square degree in Corona Borealis, by Donald Shane, published in Galaxies and the Universe, Volume IX of Stars and Stellar Systems, ed. Allan Sandage, Mary Sandage, and Jerome Kristian (1975).
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-04-24

Cosmography archives

1999: Is the Universe Fractal?

A perspectives paper by Vicent J. Martinez for Science Magazine
science.org/doi/10.1126/scienc

The distribution of galaxies in two wedges, labelled CfA2 and Las Campanas, espectively. Caption reads: A matter of scale. The galaxy distribution for the southern slices of the Las Campanas redshift survey together with the first slice of the CfA2 catalog at the Northern Hemisphere. Although the depth of the Las Campanas slices is four times (in redshift) the depth of the CfA2 slice, the size of the structures is the same in both samples, contrary to what is expected for an unbounded fractal.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-04-18

Cosmography archives

1976: A Picture of The Supercluster

by R. Brent Tully and J. Richard Fisher
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976

A conference abstract by Tully and Fisher with a plot of galaxies' positions on a polar projection, shown as black speckles against a white background.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-03-12

The new issue of Worlds of IF Science Fiction is out. It features a beautiful cover art "Out of an Amber Sky" by Rodney Matthews. An essay with a Lovecraftian title: "From Deep Darkness Came Murmurs of Awakening", by yours truly. And much more.

worldsofifmagazine.com/

The cover of the Worlds of IF Science Fiction magazine, issue number 178. Cover art features a warrior with a shield and spear atop a dinosaur-like creature battling flying saucers in a strange, prehistoric world.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-03-06

Check this out: this a tactile model of the Cosmic Web, produced by Amelia Ortiz Gil, Vicent Martinez and team as part of their project: Tactile 3D models for research and outreach in astronomy.

The model used is the Cosmic V-Web inferred from Cosmicflows-2:
doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7f

A photography of a tactile model of the Cosmic Web, that is, the large scale structure of the Universe. It features a materialization of the Cosmic Web filaments, by means of a grey mesh, and a materialization of Cosmic Web knots, by means of filled, colored blobs. Such knots include: the Great Attractor, Perseus-Pisces, Shapley, Hercules, Norma. The location of our Home galaxy the Milky Way is at the center of the model.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2025-03-04

I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Alexandre Morales for France Culture, to talk about the discovery of Quipu, one of the largest known structure of the Universe. It will air tomorrow morning at 6:52.

Here is the press release by the authors of the discovery at MPI Garching mpg.de/24197951/largest-supers

Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-12-23

These two covers do get along together quite nicely!

☑️ nature.com/nature/volumes/513/
☑️ nature.com/natastron/volumes/8

A cover of the Nature Journal, dated 4 September 2014, volume 513, issue number 7516, featuring a colorful map of the basin of attraction inside which our galaxy the Milky Way is located. This structure is roughly shaped like a heart, inside which thousands of very thin flowlines are seen converging onto a unique attractor. A particular spot in the periphery of this object is pinpointed with a label that reads "YOU ARE HERE". Outside of this structure, more flowlines converge on separate, neighbor attractors. White speckles peperred across the whole scene represent positions of galaxies. A title reads Laniakea, with a subtitle reading The galaxy supercluster that includes the Milky Way. Three other research papers in various science areas are mentioned in the lower section of the cover. Credits: Cover art: Mark A. Garlick / source: Daniel Pomarède.A cover of the Nature Astronomy journal, dated December 2024, Volume 8, issue number 12, featuring a three-dimensional visualization of the cosmic velocity field inferred from the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxies' distances and velocities. This map spans two billion lightyears from top to bottom. The velocity field is mapped by means of tens of thousands of very thin streamlines, seeded at the positions of the catalog's galaxies. Streamlines are shown white and semi-transparent, against a black background. They exhibit a very complex pattern with multiple attractors, seen as points of convergence of the lines. A text reads Galaxies from wherever flock together. Credits: Image: Daniel Pomarède, Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l’Univers, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay. Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-12-21

Wowzer! Map of cosmic flows, by yours truly, makes it to the cover of the Nature Astronomy journal.

"Galaxies from
wherever flock
together"

I'm no poet, but could this be a Haiku?

nature.com/natastron/volumes/8

Credits:
Image: Daniel Pomarède, Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l’Univers, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay.
Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic.

A cover of the Nature Astronomy journal, dated December 2024, Volume 8, issue number 12, featuring a three-dimensional visualization of the cosmic velocity field inferred from the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxies' distances and velocities. This map spans two billion lightyears from top to bottom. The velocity field is mapped by means of tens of thousands of very thin streamlines, seeded at the positions of the catalog's galaxies. Streamlines are shown white and semi-transparent, against a black background. They exhibit a very complex pattern with multiple attractors, seen as points of convergence of the lines. A text reads Galaxies from wherever flock together.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-12-02

A map of the structure surrounding the Local Void

In this map our Milky Way galaxy lies at the origin of the red-green-blue orientation arrows, each 200 million lightyears in length.

☑️ this is Fig.1 of ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019
☑️ more insights by APOD: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190806.ht

a cosmographic map featuring the cosmological large scale structure in our local cosmic neighborhood. The density field is displayed as semi-transparent isosurfaces, colored grey for the the lower isocontour value, and colored in nuances of red for five higher levels. The resulting structure is filamentary, with high-density knots at the filaments' crossing, an architecture typical of the Cosmic Web. Three colored arrows materialize the cardinal axes of the Supergalactic Coordiante System, centered at our location. Several important actors of our local cosmography are named: Milky Way, Virgo, Arrowhead, Great Attractor, Perseus-Pisces, Coma, Arch, Hercules. The name of the astronomer leading the study is inprinted in the lower right corner of the figure, reading R. Brent Tully. All these elements are drawn against a white background.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-11-28

Cosmography archives

2005: Discovery of the Sloan Great Wall

by J. Richard Gott and co-authors
doi.org/10.1086/428890

At the time of its discovery, this 1.37 billion light-years long filament is the largest observed structure in the Universe.

The distribution of galaxies obtained with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and displayed as two fan-shaped plots with Right Ascension versus redshift distances as coordinates. Galaxies' positions are shown as black points on a white background, featuring filamentary structures typical of the Cosmic Web, which describes the large-scale structure of the Universe. The two fan-shaped plots lie on top of each other, with their boundaries elegantly matching each other's. On the lower plot, running from 0 to 14000 km/s in redshift, and from 8 to 17 hours in Right Ascension, is shown the CfA2 Great Wall, with its iconic stickman-shaped distribution of galaxies. On the higher plot, running from 14000 to 28000 km/s in redshift distances, and from about 9 to 14 hours in Right Ascension, is featured the Sloan Great Wall. A caption completes this figure.
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-11-18

We Are Here

a beautiful visualization of Laniakea, our Home supercluster of galaxies, produced by Félix Pharand-Deschênes

A rendering of the three-dimensional envelope delineating the basin of attraction inside which our galaxy the Milky Way is located. The envelope is rendered with a semi-transparent blueish surface inside which are displayed thousands of very thin flowlines rendered in gold color, that are seen converging onto a unique attractor. A particular spot in the periphery of this object is pinpointed with a label that reads "WE ARE HERE". The scene is rendered against a colorful background image of a numerical simulation of the cosmic web, made of filaments, voids and knots, typical of the distribution of matter on cosmological scales. This visualization is entitled "The Laniakea Supercluster" and a text reads "Among the largest known structures in the Universe, superclusters are large groups of smaller galaxy clusters. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of the Local Group, which itself is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which in turn belongs to the Laniakea Supercluster. The Laniakea Supercluster extends more than 500 million light-years and contains the mass of hundred million billion stars, grouped in over 100,000 large galaxies."
Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-10-18

A probabilistic new map of the universe surrounding the Milky Way reveals that our galaxy is likely part of an even larger "basin of attraction" than we previously assumed

livescience.com/space/cosmolog

Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-10-10

Get ready to feel cosmically insignificant.
popularmechanics.com/space/dee

Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-10-09

Milky Way galaxy is part of something huge

Check out the new video produced by Anton Petrov a.k.a on our recent paper

youtu.be/knxQ4Akfxy4

Daniel Pomarèdepomarede
2024-10-09

Cosmography archives

1946: Rotating Universe?

by George Gamow
nature.com/articles/15854

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst