1.2 Million Galaxies Dot Largest Ever 3D Map

Hundreds of physicists and astronomers gathered data from sky surveys over the course of five years to build the map, which covers about one-quarter of the sky. Called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, the project measured 1.2 million galaxies covering a volume of 650 cubic billion light-years, New York University researcher Jeremy Tinker said in a statement.