A talk by June Kollmeier on how her colleagues are mapping our galaxies, black holes and stars.

Humans have been studying the stars for thousands of years, but astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier is on a special mission: creating the most detailed 3-D maps of the universe ever made. Journey across the cosmos as she shares her team’s work on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, imaging millions of stars, black holes and galaxies in unprecedented detail. If we maintain our pace, she says, we can map every large galaxy in the observable universe by 2060. “We’ve gone from arranging clamshells to general relativity in a few thousand years,” she says. “If we hang on 40 more, we can map all the galaxies.”

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

  • Used by people who call the work: Big History, Cosmic Evolution
  • Applies a deep time evolutionary perspective to: Science
  • Learning Stages: Middle 6 - 8
  • Type: Audio
  • Keywords: Mapping the sky over time, SDSS, stars, galaxies, black holes
  • Why I love this Resource: It is a very simple overview of the whole global mapping effort going on. Which telescopes around Earth are being used for what explorations. She conveys the evolutionary perspective powerfully because the sky is constantly changing and stars are dying all the time and new galaxies found. Its a map in progress! She shares the importance of the 'citizen scientist' and honoring curiosity. Good for young students
  • Link to Resource: Click here
  • Posted By: Orla Hazra
  • Date Added: June 21, 2019