Cosmic Atlas / field notes
About the atlas
Cosmic Atlas places public scientific catalogs into one continuous, physically scaled map. It is an orientation and discovery companion; source catalogs and specialist tools remain authoritative for quantitative work.
Data credits and acknowledgments
ESA / Gaia / DPAC
This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency mission Gaia, processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for DPAC has been provided by national institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.
DESI DR1
This research uses data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and participating institutions.
DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR11
Coordinate-centered object imagery uses the Legacy Surveys Data Release 11 optical map through its public Sky Viewer. Every coordinate-bearing object also gets curated or DSS2 context; if the live DR11 cutout is unavailable, the card identifies and displays an all-sky AllWISE infrared field from CDS/Aladin. Survey imagery provides angular observing context and does not determine distances in the atlas. See the Berkeley Lab release.
NASA Exoplanet Archive
Exoplanet data come from the NASA Exoplanet Archive, operated by Caltech under contract with NASA.
SIMBAD / CDS
Selected object records use SIMBAD, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.
BASS DR2 / VizieR
Mass-bearing active-galaxy records use BASS Data Release 2 through the CDS/VizieR catalog service.
eROSITA-DE DR2
X-ray point and extended sources use the eROSITA-DE Data Release 2 (eRASS:3) catalogs from the German eROSITA consortium; acknowledge the release and cite Ramos-Ceja et al. 2026 when using these data.
SDSS-V DR20 / SPIDERS
Optical spectroscopy of eROSITA X-ray targets uses the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR20 SPIDERS DL1 value-added catalog from the Black Hole Mapper program.
OpenNGC
NGC and IC records use the community-maintained OpenNGC database under its published license.
JPL SSD / Horizons
Solar-system object and ephemeris data use NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Dynamics resources and Horizons.
International Astronomical Union
Dwarf-planet labels follow formal IAU classifications; orbital and physical data remain credited to their originating JPL sources.
NAIF
Reference frames and kernels use resources from NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF/SPICE).
Use with care
Displayed density reflects catalog selection, measurement quality, and rendering level of detail. Missing uncertainty, epoch, completeness, or distance semantics means not supplied, never zero.
Source code
Cosmic Atlas is open source under the MIT license: github.com/Ferdev/skychart. Third-party catalog records keep their upstream licenses and citation terms; see DATA-NOTICE.md in the repository.