Universe Viewer

Interactive software for the visualization and geodesic analysis of high-redshift astronomical objects.
It makes it possible to produce a conformal mapping of cosmological structures, particularly quasars, taking into account the curvature of the universe.

Try it from the official website !

Universe Viewer is intended to be a working tool for researchers in cosmology; it relies on concepts from astronomy and general relativity. It must produce a conformal map of the universe and make it possible to identify large-scale structures in reference or comoving space.

Setup / deploy

To setup Universe Viewer on your own web server, get a release and unpack it in a served directory. Universe Viewer must be served at root of your domain.

If you want to benefit from computation parallelization, your sever has to meet the following requirements:

• define Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy header to same-origin,
• define Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy header to require-corp,
• use HTTPS.

Universe Viewer comes with a .htaccess file to enforce the required headers rules.

Moreover, parallelization needs client browser must support SharedArrayBuffer and Web Workers.

Project Build

npm install

Compile and Hot-Reload for Development

npm run dev

Compile and Minify for Production

npm run build

Lint with ESLint

npm run lint

References

Framework for cosmography at high redshift (R. Triay, L. Spinelli and R. Lafaye, 1996).

Catalogs

Here is a summary of included catalogs.

Hewitt & Burbidge QSO Catalog

• Authors: A. Hewitt and G. Burbidge.
• Date: 1993.
• Website

IRAS Point Source Catalog Redshift (PSCz)

• Authors: Saunders W., Sutherland W.J., Maddox S.J., Keeble O., Oliver S.J., Rowan-Robinson M., McMahon R.G., Efstathiou G.P., Tadros H., White S.D.M., Frenk C.S., Carraminana A., Hawkins M.R.S.
• Date: 2000.
• Website
• More details here

2dF QSO Redshifr Survey

• Authors: Croom et al.
• Date: 2001
• Website

6dF Galaxy Survey

• Authors: Jones et al.
• Date: 2009
• Website
• More details here

Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (13th Ed.) (Veron-Cetty+)

• Authors: Veron-Cetty M.P., Veron P.
• Date: 2010
• Website
• More details here

2MASS Redshift Survey

• Authors: Huchra J.P., Macri L.M., Masters K.L., Jarrett T.H., Berlind P., Calkins M., Crook A.C., Cutri R., Erdogdu P., Falco E., George T., Hutcheson C.M., Lahav O., Mader J., Mink J.D., Martimbeau N., Schneider S., Skrutskie M., Tokarz S., Westover M. <Astrophys. J. Suppl. 199, 26 (2012)>
• Date: 2012
• Website
• More details here

SDSS QSO Catalog: DR16Q (v3 Superset and v4)

• Authors: Lyke et al.
• Date: 2020
• Website
• More details here

Million Quasars Catalog, Version 8

• Authors: Eric W. Flesch
• Date: 2023
• Website
• More details here

Quaia: The Gaia-unWISE Quasar Catalog (G20.0 and G20.5)

• Authors: Storey-Fisher Kate, Hogg David W., Rix Hans-Walter, Eilers Anna-Christina, Fabbian Giulio, Blanton Michael, Alonso David
• Date: 2023
• Website
• More details here
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

AGN/QSO Value-Added Catalog for DESI DR1

• Authors: DESI Collaboration et al.
• Date: 2025
• Website
• More details here
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License