"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams
Here inside the Milky Way galaxy, all you need are some dark skies and a decent set of eyes, and you'll be greeted of a spectacular, close-up view of the galaxy you inhabit.
Thanks to a breakthrough robotic innovation, an international collaboration that includes the University of Toronto has advanced the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a 20-year-long research project that has been investigating the structure and evolution of our cosmic home, the Milky Way galaxy.
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On December 3, humanity suddenly had information at its fingertips that people have wanted for, well, forever: the precise distances to the stars.
“You type in the name of a star or its position, and in less than a second you will have the answer,” Barry Madore, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and Carnegie Observatories, said on a Zoom call last week. “I mean …” He trailed off.
Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.