Downloads from the SDSS/WMAP Universe

Movies

Right clicking on a link allows you to save it to your hard drive. Loading it in your browser from there is faster. On Macs with one-button mice, press CTRL at the same time you press the mouse button.

Made in 2007

We're now able to make far better movies than before, so we're revamping this page.

SDSS DR3, from the Milky Way to the CMB. The two wireframe spheres seen along the way are of radius one million and one billion light years. 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

small version: MP4, 352 x 288 (Video iPod size), 9MB.
large version: AVI, 640 x 480, 132MB.

Made in 2004

Parts of movies used to make the SDSS movie using the Third Data Release. They are in MPEG format unless otherwise stated.

Sol to Milky Way (36Mb)
Galaxies: Zoom-out (no quasars) (32Mb)
Galaxies: Zoom-out + Rotation (39Mb)
Galaxies: Rotation (5Mb)
Quasars + CMB (16Mb)
Rotating CMB (13Mb). This alternative version may have a better transition, depending on the player you're using.

Sloan Galaxies Rotation. A rotation of the SDSS galaxies (no quasars). 17 Mb. Best to leave it running as a loop.

Another rotation, this time lengthwise, 6Mb. Again, run as a loop.

Sloan Galaxies only. A straight flyout. One minute, 30 Mb.

Sloan galaxies, quasars and the Cosmic Microwave Background: 45 Megs, 3 minutes.

Another one, with Sloan Release 2 data, i.e. 250 000 galaxies and 35 000 quasars.

A complete flythrough, as would be seen at the Geowall on SciTech, from the sun to local galaxies to Sloan quasars.

Interactive Stuff

The following downloads are for Windows or Linux. Unzip each zip file into a new folder, then click on any files with icons. Files marked "GeoWall" come up with left-right stereo pairs that you can use on a GeoWall. These files are large; you can only run them on recent computers with good graphics cards.

sdss4wmap.zip

sdss4wmap_mac.tar.gz

SDSS Data Release 4

sdss3wmap.zip 300 000 galaxies and 49 000 quasars from SDSS Release 3 (Oct 2004). Otherwise it's exactly like sdss_dr2.tar.gz below.
sdss_dr2.tar.gz (32Mb). Starts out at the sun or local group (there are two versions, owing to clipping problems with older graphics cards - try the latter first), zooming back (right mouse button down, mouse move back, right mouse button up while mouse still moving back) takes you through a nice galactic slice (you'll see what that means...). You can turn on distance spheres of a thousand, million or billion light years.
wmapsdss.tar.gz (25Mb) Cosmic Microwave Background (from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) and Galaxies and Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This version has points only. Runs on Windows and Linux.
wmapsdss.zip (40Mb) : As above, but with polygons. (Looks prettier, but very hard for machines to handle - most people are better off sticking with the 'Lite' version.)

Navigation: The key is to hold the mouse button down while moving. As navigation is inertia-based (very cool), the scene keeps moving when you let go of the mouse button, depending on how fast you were moving the mouse when you let go. Move-click with the left mouse button to rotate, with the right mouse button to zoom.