The Most Colourful Map Yet Will Help Solve Fundamental Questions About the Universe

A new infrared telescope will soon be launched for a two-year mission to take images. This will allow astronomers to create the “most colourful” map of the cosmos, helping us understand how the universe came into being and why life exists inside of it.

The spectroscopic images taken by the SPHEREx telescope measure individual wavelengths of light from a source, telling us about the formation of the universe, the growth of all galaxies across cosmic history, and the location of water and life-forming molecules in our galaxy.

NASA‘s SPHEREx will divide the light into 96 bands during its mission. Covering the whole sky, the telescope will offer new insights into the chemistry and physics of objects in the universe and complement the work done by other infrared telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. Spectroscopic images of 1 billion galaxies, 100 million stars, and 10,000 asteroids will be taken, answering questions that require a view of the entire sky. One of SPEREx’s objectives is to identify water- and life-bearing molecules – or biogenic molecules – in the clouds of gas in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The molecules that create life – water, carbon dioxide, methanol – trapped in icy particles in the coldest parts of our galaxy remain a huge mystery. Since icy biogenic molecules have distinct features in the infrared spectrum, SPHEREx could pinpoint where they are in our galaxy and nearby systems. By identifying their precise placement in the universe, astronomers will be able to determine the necessary conditions to form biogenic molecules in space, revealing a crucial step in how life came to be. SPHEREx will generate 8 million new spectroscopic images of life-bearing molecules, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.