For All to See
AMNH: After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth's atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet's high desert... Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way recedes, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet...
The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe... The Digital Universe will soon be updated with a more accurate and user-friendly software interface... 'I liken the Digital Universe to the invention of the globe,' says curator Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the Museum. 'When Mercator invented the globe, everyone wanted one. He had back orders for years. It gave everyone a new perspective on where they live in relation to others, and we hope the Digital Universe does the same on a grander, cosmic scale.'
