Largest digital survey of visible Universe released

Cosmologists at Durham University have helped put together the world's largest digital survey of the visible Universe. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys, which have mapped billions of stars and galaxies, have been publicly released, with scientists predicting this will lead to new discoveries about the Universe. The data has been made available by the international Pan-STARRS project. Stars and galaxies Astronomers and cosmologists, including scientists at Durham University, used a 1.8-metre telescope at the summit of Haleakalā, on Maui, Hawaii, to repeatedly image three quarters of the visible sky over four years. The data they have captured in the Pan-STARRS1 Surveys is made up of three billion separate sources, including stars, galaxies, and other space objects. This immense collection of information contains two petabytes of computer data - equivalent to one billion selfies or one hundred times the total content of Wikipedia. Pan-STARRS is hosted by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, which is releasing the data alongside the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA.