Space is so unimaginably vast that it seems unlikely the human race will ever really be able to grasp the actual size of the universe in which we live. But that doesn’t mean we’ll ever stop trying. This map is the most detailed, most complete 3D depiction of the known universe ever created – and it took over a decade to make.

(click above image to enlarge)

The Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (or 2MASS) scanned the entire sky in three near-infrared wavelength bands. Redshifts, or measurements of galaxy distances, were added later to provide a more complete picture of the universe. This map extends to more than 380 million light-years and shows over 43,000 galaxies. The only part of the sky not mapped – represented by the black band in the middle of the map – is the part we can’t see behind our own Milky Way galaxy.

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Cesspits – those ancient toilets/garbage dumps where the lowest-ranking archaeologists get to spend their time digging – are not typically the site of many cool historic discoveries. But that’s exactly where five fascinating 18th century telescopes were found in Amsterdam. The scopes are so interesting partly because they are made of bone – cattle metatarsal bones, to be exact. While four of the dual-lens scopes are made of a single bone, the fifth is made of two parts held together with a screw thread.

The scopes would have been luxury items when they were constructed, likely used to look at faraway items on land or at sea – or even to take in stage shows or operas. All five of the objects were excavated at different times over the last 40 years, but it wasn’t clear at first just what they were. They looked like simple pieces of bone, but upon further inspection they turned out to be far more interesting. Researchers aren’t sure why the telescopes would have been thrown into toilets, but they figure that either they broke and their wealthy owners simply threw them away…or even sadder, they may have been dropped and their owners didn’t want to reach into the toilet to retrieve them. Kind of like the 18th century version of the toilet-phone.

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To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s invention of the telescope, NASA has released this stunning image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The image is the result of a collaboration between Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer, NASA’s three Great Observatories, and consists of infrared (from Spitzer) near-infrared (from Hubble) and X-ray (from Chandra) wavelengths. Combined, they create an absolutely breathtaking view of the very center of the galaxy we happen to occupy. But don’t settle for the small image above; click here to see it in all its incredible, zoomable glory.

The image shows an area of sky that’s about half the size of the moon, or 38 X 14 arcminutes across. If you look carefully, you can see the massive black hole that sits near the center of the galaxy; it is four million times the size of our sun, but still looks minuscule when compared to the entire galaxy, which is the size of 400 billion suns. Discover Magazine has an incredible description of the stunning natural space art contained in this image; but even without knowing exactly what it is you’re looking at, it’s easy to see why space has captivated us for as long as we’ve been able to look up at the night sky.

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