A team of Chinese and international experts has created the largest 3D map of the universe. It has the potential of furthering man's understanding of the universe's expansion, galaxy formation and evolution.

The researchers cataloged more than 7.5 million galaxies, beating the previous largest galaxy survey by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, according to the latest news release by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

However, the stunning picture they published, with the Earth at the center and the farthest galaxies plotted at distances of 10 billion light-years, was only about 10 percent of the way through their five-year mission to obtain spectra of over 35 million galaxies by 2026.

Chinese scientists at the National Astronomical Observatories under the CAS and their international collaborators from the United States, Spain, Britain and France released a huge 2D map of the universe in January 2021.

Based on the 2D map, they started to observe the redshifts of those galaxies to estimate how far they are away from the Earth.

Large-scale redshift observations can help figure out the location of galaxies and reveal the nature of dark energy that may result in the universe's expansion, the researchers said.

(With input from Xinhua)