Less than a year after its launch, NASA's SPHEREx observatory mapped the sky, painting the entire universe in 102 colors invisible to the human eye.
The project could help astronomers solve some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos. Most importantly, NASA hopes the map will provide insight into the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang and a process called inflation.
“Essentially, we have 102 new maps of the whole sky, each at a different wavelength and containing unique information about the objects it sees,” Sean Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in an interview. statement. “I think every astronomer will find something of value here, as NASA missions allow the world to answer fundamental questions about how the Universe began and how it has changed to ultimately make it a home for us.”
Creating a colorful space map
NASA Spectrophotometer for the History of the Universe, the Age of Reionization, and the Ice Explorer (SPHEREx) was launched on March 11, 2025, and began the process of mapping space in May. Six months later, it made its first scan of the entire sky.
This is an intense process during which the telescope orbits the Earth approximately 14.5 times a day. About 600 images are required every 24 hours, each sent to six detectors combined with a 17-color gradient filter, resulting in about 3,600 images. Once an exposure is completed, the observatory moves, ready to make the next one.
Using this process, called spectroscopy, astronomers imaged the entire sky in 102 colors, each representing a wavelength in the infrared spectrum. This is not the first time a telescope has imaged the entire sky, but none have done so in so many wavelengths and colors, astronomers say.
“I think this makes us mantis shrimp in telescopes because we have an amazing multicolor visual detection system, and we can also see a very wide swath of our surroundings,” Beth Fabinski, SPHEREx project manager at JPL, said in a statement.
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Solving space mysteries
SPHEREx is midway through its mission and will continue to orbit Earth for about 18 months, during which time it will complete three more all-sky scans.
By the end of the mission, the telescope will have orbited the planet more than 11,000 times and collected data on more than 450 million galaxies. Using this information, scientists will create 3D maps of galaxies, calculate the distance to distant galaxies, and determine variations in their distribution. This, in turn, will allow researchers to trace their evolution throughout cosmic history and search for substances such as water that are vital to life.
It is also hoped that the data collected will lead to discoveries which improve our understanding of what happened immediately after the big bang, during a process called inflation. This period of inflation lasted only a fraction of a second (10-32 seconds to be precise). According to the European Space Agency (ESA), during this time the Universe expanded dramatically, increasing in size by 1030 times. Events that happened in that short time, including random quantum fluctuations, shaped the way the Universe looks today.
“SPHEREx is a mid-scale astrophysics mission delivering big science,” JPL Director Dave Gallagher said in a statement.
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