Hyper Suprime-Cam survey maps dark matter in the universe

Today, an international group of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University's Rachel Mandelbaum, released the deepest wide field map of the three-dimensional distribution of matter in the universe ever made and increased the precision of constraints for dark energy with the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey (HSC).

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Credit: Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

The weak lensing surveys such as HSC prefer a slightly less clumpy Universe (left) than that predicted by Planck (right). The pictures show the slight but noticeable difference as expected from large computer simulations.

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Credit: HSC project/UTokyo

Left panel: The 3-dimensional dark matter map of the universe inferred from one of the six HSC observation areas is shown in the background with various shades of blue (brighter areas have more dark matter). The map was inferred from the distortions of shapes of galaxies in the HSC data which are indicated by white sticks. The stick lengths represent the amount of distortion and the angle of the stick corresponds to the direction of the distortion.

Right panel: The measurements are enabled by the light from distant galaxies that travels through the universe and gets deflected by matter at different epochs in the universe, before reaching the Subaru telescope.

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Light data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS), which spanned over 15 million galaxies at a distance of 6 billion light-years from Earth, was used to create this new map of dark matter in the region and 4 others.

From HubbleCast and host Dr. J. Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have studied a giant filament of dark matter in 3D for the first time. Extending 60 million light-years from one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, the filament is part of the cosmic web that constitutes the large-scale structure of the Universe, and is a leftover of the very first moments after the Big Bang.