Smithsonian.com

In an unintentional nod to the early 90′s Windows screensaver that whisked you through space with a field of zooming stars, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s A Flight Through the Universe takes you on a trip around the universe. There is, however, one huge difference between the gloriously pixelated screensaver and the Sloan video: these stars are real.

The video was put together as part of the Sloan survey’s attempts to build a full three-dimensional map of the universe. The map currently includes 540,000 galaxies (of which 400,000 appear in this video). By the end of the 13 year project, the organization hopes to “measure the positions of 1.5 million massive galaxies over the past six billion years of cosmic time, as well as 160,000 quasars — giant black holes actively feeding on stars and gas — from as long ago as 12 billion years in the past.”

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A Guided Tour of the Universe