Space Time
Fly through the real cosmic web
43,530 real galaxies from the 2MASS Redshift Survey, each placed by its measured redshift. The filaments, walls and voids you fly through are the actual structure of the local universe, out past a billion light-years, and you reach them by zooming out from your own backyard. Free, in your browser.
🚀 Fly through the cosmic web Free · 43,530 real galaxies · one continuous universe
Real data, not decoration
The map is built from the 2MASS Redshift Survey (Huchra et al. 2012). Each galaxy's sky position and redshift velocity become a 3D coordinate through a Hubble-law distance, so the Great Wall, the Virgo Cluster and the empty voids between them sit exactly where astronomy measured them. Dots are not uniform: each galaxy glows in proportion to its measured infrared luminosity, so giants like M87 stand out from the dwarfs around them. The dark band crossing the field is the Zone of Avoidance, where our own galaxy's dust hides what lies behind it. That band is in the data, and we kept it.
Every dot answers when you click it
Any galaxy in the field is selectable. The card gives its distance and lookback time, and where the survey recorded a morphology it names the kind: elliptical, spiral or irregular. Color the field four ways from the Display menu: by distance for the redshift ramp, by galaxy type with old ellipticals warm and star-forming spirals blue, by local density, or plain. Brightness and dot-size dials are there too.
See the threads, or the glow
Two one-click looks reshape the whole field. Scientific draws the filament threads — over twenty thousand dense-to-dense galaxy links computed from the survey itself — so the web reads as a wireframe skeleton. Cinematic wraps the dense regions in a soft plasma glow with depth fog, and on desktop adds the volumetric glow: the survey's density field ray-marched as luminous fog you fly through, where the bright billows are the real superclusters and the dark hollows are the real voids. Threads, glow, fog and volume each have their own toggle, and while you fly, the distance readout names the structure you are inside: a cluster, a filament, a wall, or a void.
Connected to everything else
This is not a standalone demo. The cosmic web is the outermost scale of one continuous universe: start on the ground under tonight's sky, zoom out through the solar system and 2.5 million stars, watch the Milky Way assemble around you, and keep going until the galaxies become dots in the web. Along the way you pass the Laniakea flow streams pouring toward the Great Attractor, the named clusters and superclusters, and finally the cosmic microwave background. Press G to fly home.
FAQ
Are the galaxies real or procedural?
Real. Every dot is one of 43,530 galaxies from the 2MASS Redshift Survey, placed by RA, Dec and a Hubble-law distance from its measured redshift.
How far does the map reach?
Past 500 megaparsecs of survey galaxies, more than a billion light-years of lookback time, with landmarks like the Shapley Supercluster and the Boötes Void beyond, and the CMB as the outer wall.
Can I click on individual galaxies?
Yes. Distance, lookback time and, where the survey knows it, the galaxy's type. Dot brightness follows real infrared luminosity.
What is the dark band across the field?
The Zone of Avoidance: our own Milky Way's dust hides the galaxies behind it. It is in the real data, so it is in the map.
Is it free?
Yes. In your browser, no account, no download.