What am I looking at?

This map represents the Cosmic Background Radiation. If you point a thermometer at the sky and subtract the effects of all the stars, you'll see a faint glow coming from the outer edge of the observable Universe, caused by remnants of the Big Bang itself. We've drawn the "hot spots" that your thermometer will see as mountains, and the cold spots as oceans.

There are two other versions of the map, too: Map II presents the same view of the sky as seen in infrared, and Map III shows the "hot" and "cold" spots in false color instead of as mountains and oceans (red = hotter, blue = colder).

There are a lot of cool features and locations in this map, and we invite you to explore it and even name a piece of it yourself!