The Physics of the Universe Survey (PAUS) accelerator has revealed a groundbreaking catalog detailing distances to millions of galaxies with unprecedented precision.
A groundbreaking catalog has been published, detailing millions of distant galaxies and providing measurements of distances with unprecedented precision at never-before-explored depth and field of view.
This catalog is a creation of PAUS, the Physics Survey of the Accelerating Universe, an international collaboration led by the Spanish government. The survey includes 14 institutions from six countries, including the University of Portsmouth.
The catalog, collected over two hundred nights between 2015 and 2019 using the PAUCam camera of the William Herschel telescope in La Palma, is now available to the public on the PAUS website and the CosmoHub web portal.
The catalog, which covers a sky area of 50 square degrees - equal to about 250 full moons - provides data on 1.8 million astronomical objects. This information will allow astronomers to create more accurate maps of cosmic structures and study phenomena such as dark matter and dark energy, deepening our understanding of how the universe formed and expanded.
Enrique Gastanya, Director of PAUS, said: "PAUS presents a groundbreaking approach to creating cosmic maps, which was made possible through the design and development of an innovative device and a dedicated survey to collect and analyze data in ways that have never been done before. I had the privilege of working together with such a talented and reliable group."
The accelerated expansion of the universe is attributed to dark energy, which makes up about 70 percent of the universe, but its nature is still a mystery. PAUS offers new insights into this puzzle, providing a precise and comprehensive characterization of millions of galaxies up to distances of more than 10 billion light years.
This catalog is a valuable resource for the astronomical community, aiding in the scientific analysis and calibration of other cosmological surveys.
The PAUCam camera was specially designed to precisely measure the distances of galaxies, and to enable the study of the expansion of the universe under the influence of dark matter and dark energy.
This catalog is a significant advance in the study of the universe using photometric redshift measurements that determine the distances of galaxies as seen over billions of years.
To achieve these measurements, the PAU camera uses 40 different colored filters, which represent narrow frequency ranges in the optical spectrum. In this technique, the same field is photographed many times through different color filters. As objects move away from us, the light they emit is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. In astronomy, the redshift is essential when calculating an object's distance from Earth.
David Navarro-Jirones, first author of the paper published today, said: "The accuracy of measuring galaxy distances depends on the number of filters used, because each filter provides different information about the galaxy.
"The great advantage of PAUS is the combination of information from 40 different filters, which allows for very accurate distance measurement. Such a level of accuracy is essential for studying the structure of the universe, which requires data from a large number of galaxies."
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