Sky Surveys

2000–present

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has mapped more than a third of the sky and the spectra of millions of galaxies, quasars, and stars, building a 3D map of the universe.

1997–2001

The Two Micron All Sky Survey imaged the entire sky in three near-infrared bands, cataloguing hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies.

2010

WISE surveyed the whole sky in infrared light, producing a catalogue of more than 500 million objects.

2022

Gaia Data Release 3 provides positions, distances, motions, and physical properties for nearly two billion stars — the most detailed map of the Milky Way to date.

2010–present

Pan-STARRS in Hawaii repeatedly images the sky to discover asteroids, comets, and transient events, including the first interstellar object, ʻOumuamua.

2013–2019

The Dark Energy Survey mapped hundreds of millions of galaxies from Cerro Tololo to probe the nature of cosmic acceleration.

2025

The Legacy Survey of Space and Time, conducted by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will image the entire southern sky every few nights for a decade.

The Digitized Sky Survey is a digital scan of historical photographic sky surveys, a foundational all-sky reference for astronomy.

1995

The Hubble Deep Field was a long exposure of a tiny, apparently empty patch of sky that revealed thousands of distant galaxies.

2004

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field went deeper still, capturing some of the most distant galaxies ever seen in visible and near-infrared light.