The map is made from radio telescope observations of millions of objects in the sky.
The map is already incredibly detailed. With more than 4 million radio sources, most of which are galaxies, this data release has “more radio sources in it than all other surveys of the entire sky combined,” says, a radio astronomer at Leiden University who contributed to LOFAR and will use its data in his research.
. To check it out, first click on the link–then be patient as it may take a few minutes to load–and it’ll bring up the map. You can rotate the view in any direction by holding down left-click and moving the mouse . You can also pan left, right, up, down by holding down right-click, and zoom in and out by scrolling to get a sense of what’s happening in our galactic neck of the woods. From certain angles, you can see how some regions are more or less dense with galaxies.Like the constellations you see when you look up at the night sky, LOFAR sees radio sources as a flat canvas.