Positions of Thousands of Galaxies Space Wallpaper

This spectacular space wallpaper is a map of a section of the Universe showing the positions of thousands of galaxies that were measured as part of the VIPERS survey with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The observer on the Earth is at the left and galaxies towards the right are seen at earlier times in the history of the Universe. Redshift 0.65 corresponds to looking back about six billion years and redshift 1.0 to about eight billion years ago. The colors indicate the true colors of the galaxies — red objects are red elliptical galaxies and blue are star-forming spiral galaxies. The sizes of the blobs indicate the brightness of the galaxies. The complex structure of the large-scale structure of the cosmic web is clearly seen. This image was released March 12, 2013.