Astronomers have mapped approximately 4.4 million space objects billions of light-years away, including 1 million space objects that astronomers had not seen earlier. More about the newly found objects in the night sky in the following paragraphs.
Galaxy in the sky – what astronomers have mapped
The bulk findings of the objects comprise galaxies that are home to massive black holes or new stars that are growing faster. There are other discoveries as well, and they mainly include groups of colliding glaring stars present in distant galaxies. These glaring and colliding stars or celestial bodies differ in their brightness as they reside in the Milky Way, as per a news statement released by the Durham University in England.
More about the observations
These observations in the space and galaxy were made by referring to a massive amount of data from the Low-Frequency Array Telescope, also known as the LOFAR, which makes use of low radio frequencies so that astronomers can observe approximately a quarter of the sky of the Northern Hemisphere and make a note of the same in details. It is operated by ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.
The data received above is the second series of data that has been obtained from the LOFAR sky survey and that which has been made public and covers 13 times more of the coverage in comparison to the first release, which had radio signals logged in from as many as 300,000 galaxies and various other celestial or space galaxy objects.
Another solution for revealing the universe’s secrets is radio astronomy, and this applies especially to those objects that cannot be revealed in visible light, like black holes.
Interestingly, to make the data public and to produce the map, scientists have used state-of-the-art algorithms related to data processing on computers that are said to be high performing all over the European continent. It processed 3,500 hours of observations that have occupied 8 petabytes of disk space, equivalent to approximately 20,000 laptops.
Astronomer Timothy Shimwell, associated with ASTRON and Leiden University, revealed that it is an exciting project that they are working on. And every time a map is created, the screens are flooded with newer discoveries and objects that people have never seen before with the human eyes. The astronomer also said it is exciting to see the sky galaxy light and unexplored phenomena that appear in the highly energetic radio waves.
