The Six-degree Field Galaxy Survey is a redshift survey conducted by the Anglo-Australian Observatory with the 1.2 m UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia.
From 2001 to 2009 the survey has mapped the nearby universe over nearly half the sky, acquiring 136,304 redshift spectra.
This map shows 124647 single 6dF objects each of them representing a galaxy in the infinite expanses of the universe.
6dFGS Final Release
Galaxies: 124647 Sky Coverage: 17000 deg2 Median Redshift: 0.10833 equates to ~ 1.49 billion LYs Survey: 2001–2009 Published: 31.03.2009
Telescopes are observing millions of new galaxies every year and the idea of what the universe looks like is constantly evolving. Several deep sky surveys show us, that the space is filled with billions of galaxies forming a global filamentary structure. This website visualizes such cosmic structures in 3D where you can rotate, pan and zoom the map. The animations are based on real data derived from the largest spectroscopic sky surveys ever made: SDSS, 6dFGS, 2dFGRS and DESI.
Astronomical data
The amount of astronomical data is growing rapidly. For example, within the SDSS project the positions and brightnesses of almost 500 million celestial objects were measured. To reduce the amount of data and speed up the loading time in this project not all of these objects are shown. In such cases the objects were selected randomly.
Animation
You may wonder why the galaxies are displayed as little squares instead of dots, circles or even images of the observed galaxies. The reason for this is again to speed up the animation and to shorten running– and loading–times. The colors of the squares ranging from light turquoise over blue to red, yellow and green indicate the distances of the galaxies from earth.
Navigation and Control
Click the buttons on the right to start and stop the automatic rotation, to open and close info boxes, to change between the various surveys and to open this introduction. The animation can be accompanied by music using the audio player at the bottom of the page.
◾ Start and stop rotation.
¡ Open and close info boxes.
1 - 5 Change between different surveys.
? Open this introduction.
Use finger gestures on touch screens or the mouse for control.
. Left mouse button: Rotate map. . Right mouse button: Pan map. . Mousewheel: Zoom in and out.
