COSMOS

A stunning view of the observable Universe

The algorithmic map highlights the number of different celestial objects going all the way back to the Big Bang

Ever since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched late last year, scientists have been looking forward to this highly advanced instrument starting to gaze at the far reaches of space and bringing us groundbreaking discoveries. The broader scientific community and all the space buffs like me don’t have to wait much longer, as NASA plans to release the first batch of images gathered by JWST — in a live event that will occur on July 12.

Not to discount the fact that we have already been mesmerized by some iconic images of deep space by its predecessor, the Hubble telescope. The vastness of the universe is hard to fathom, much less visualize in a single snapshot. However, the infographic below by Pablo Carlos Budassi provides a logarithmic map of the entire known universe, using data by researchers at Princeton University and updated as of May 2022.

Before I let you get fascinated with this visualization, it’s important to note that the celestial objects shown on this map are not shown to scale — the distance of all the celestial objects from the Earth is measured on a logarithmic scale, which…