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Dark energy is the mysterious force driving the universe's accelerating expansion.
暗能量是推动宇宙加速扩张的神秘力量。
In an effort to understand it, scientists are planning to make the largest 3D map of the universe to date.
为了理解它，科学家们正计划制作迄今为止最大的宇宙三维地图。
But before the galaxies can be plotted in three dimensions, researchers had to capture an enormous area in 2D.
但在这些星系被绘制成三维图之前，研究人员必须在二维图上捕捉到一个巨大的区域。
The result is the largest image of the night sky ever.
结果就是有史以来最大的夜空图像。
And you can see the whole thing online.
你可以在网上看到。
It's hard to overstate just how impressive this single image is.
这张照片给人留下的深刻印象怎么夸大都不为过。
And the longer you look at it, the more you appreciate all of the work it must have taken to make the whole thing possible.
你看的时间越长，你就越欣赏它做出的所有努力。
It captures half of the sky and more than a billion galaxies, depicted through over 10 trillion pixels.
它拍摄了半边天和超过10亿个星系，通过超过10万亿像素的图像进行描绘。
Do you take a lot of pictures on your phone? Are you always running out of space for selfies or cat photos?
你用手机拍了很多照片吗？你总是没有足够的空间自拍或者拍猫猫的照片吗？
Well, in order to create a 10 trillion pixel image, you would have to stitch together 833,000 smartphone photos.
为了创建一个10万亿像素的图像，你必须把83.3万张智能手机照片拼接在一起。
Creating this map took more than 1,400 observing nights at three telescopes over the course of six years.
在六年的时间里，用三台望远镜观测了1400多个夜晚才绘制出这张地图。
Completely covering half the sky was a huge logistical challenge for the 200 researchers involved in the project.
完全覆盖半边天对参与该项目的200名研究人员来说是一个巨大的后勤挑战。
For the telescopes to take the best images possible, the team had to consider hours of darkness, weather, exposure time, the paths of planets and satellites, the moon's brightness and location - the list goes on.
为了让望远镜拍到尽可能好的图像，小组成员必须考虑黑暗时间、天气、曝光时间、行星和卫星的路径、月球的亮度和位置等因素。
Even with all those variables factored in, there was still the matter of creating one homogeneous image.
即使考虑到所有这些变量，仍然存在创建一个均匀图像的问题。
It's not as simple as just stitching them all together - the scientists needed a way to minimize distortions caused by weather and atmospheric turbulence.
这并不是简单地把它们拼接在一起——科学家们需要一种方法来最小化天气和大气湍流造成的扭曲。
To do this they used supercomputers to compare their images with past sky surveys and select the ones that most closely matched.
为了做到这一点，他们使用超级计算机将他们的图像与过去的天空观测进行比较，并选择最接近的图像。
Once they had the most accurate and uniform pictures possible, they put them together and this is the result.
一旦他们有了最准确和统一的图片，他们就把它们放在一起，这就是结果。
Taking in the two billion objects sprinkled over such an enormous backdrop can be a bit overwhelming.
在这样一个巨大的背景上拍摄这20亿个物体可能会让人有点不知所措。
To make navigating the stars more user-friendly, the researchers adapted street-mapping software to suit their needs.
为了使导航更方便用户，研究人员调整了街道地图软件以满足他们的需要。
They created a tool called the Legacy Sky Survey Viewer.
他们创建了一个名为Legacy Sky Survey Viewer的工具。
Users can jump to an object if they know its name, or toggle filters to help find specific object types.
如果用户知道对象的名称，他就可以跳转到它，或者切换滤镜来帮助他们找到某个对象。
They can also turn on overlays to see constellations, or which galaxies the researchers plan to further study for the 3D map.
他们还可以打开覆盖图来查看星座，或者研究人员计划为3D地图进一步研究哪些星系。
While the navigation tool was originally designed to help researchers more easily find issues with their data, the scientists were surprised at how powerful it was.
虽然导航工具最初的设计目的是帮助研究人员更容易地发现数据中的问题，但科学家们对它的强大功能感到惊讶。
One said that suddenly the data just felt a lot more real and it changed the way the team interacted with it.
有人说，突然之间，数据变得更加真实，改变了团队与数据互动的方式。
Another researcher figured that if it impacted them so much, maybe the public would want to see it too.
另一位研究人员认为，如果它对他们的影响如此之大，也许公众也会希望看到它。
So they made it available to all of us online, and that means that anyone could potentially discover new examples of rare objects, or even entirely new ones.
所以他们让我们所有人都能在网上看到，这意味着任何人都有可能发现稀有物体的新例子，甚至是全新的。
Considering how awe-inspiring this 2D map is, it's amazing to think it's a stepping stone to a bigger goal.
考虑到这张2D地图是多么令人敬畏，想到它是通往更大目标的垫脚石，真是太神奇了。
It was created to identify which galaxies and quasars the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, will survey.
它的创建是为了确定暗能量光谱仪（DESI）将观测哪些星系和类星体。
This instrument will be able to measure the distances to objects located up to 12 billion lightyears away.
这台仪器将能够测量到120亿光年以外物体的距离。
DESI will also measure the redshift of these objects to determine how fast they're moving away from us.
DESI还将测量这些物体的红移，以确定它们离开我们的速度。
With this information, astronomers and cosmologists will be able to create a 3D map of a huge portion of the universe and tease out more information about how dark energy shapes the cosmos.
有了这些信息，天文学家和宇宙学家将能够绘制一幅宇宙巨大部分的3D地图，并梳理出更多有关暗能量如何塑造宇宙的信息。
If you're like me and plan to set aside at least a full day to marvel at this image, just remember that the best may still be yet to come.
如果你和我一样，计划至少抽出一整天的时间来欣赏这张照片，请记住，最好的可能还在后头。
