One year ago, we released a short video called "The Known Universe," a six-minute journey from Mt. Everest to the farthest reaches of the observable universe. Since then, the video has received almost 7 million views on YouTube, garnered over fourteen thousand comments, and is the third-most-favorited and eleventh-top-rated video in Science & Technology.

In case you missed it:

“The Known Universe” satisfies a hunger we have for the cosmos, and seeing the universe in this way often stirs emotions within us. Many, including myself, begin to feel exceptionally small—an all-too-foreign experience for our species—as we travel farther and farther away from everything that is familiar to us. Some are even compelled to reflect on our role beyond Earth, pondering the “hows” and “whys” of our existence in the universe.

All of these thoughts were conjured up from a straightforward rendering of astronomical data. For those seeing this for the first time, you may be shocked by the sheer amount of data collected from the world's observatories. For scientists, those areas that appear blank, where we have yet to point our telescopes, offer more curiosity. It is on this cosmic frontier where the answers to our questions lie, and pursuing them will enable future generations to understand how the universe formed, what ingredients are necessary for livable worlds, and perhaps even the origin of the universe itself.

What are your thoughts after viewing the "The Known Universe?" Please share them in the comments below.

With the website redesign complete, let's kick off the Digital Universe blog with some tips on manipulating data in Partiview. I am the first to admit that Partiview's user interface, while extremely powerful, is not the simplest UI to use. However, if you invest a little time, you can learn some sophisticated moves that will impress your friends.

I will focus today's post on the recently added 2MASS Galaxy Catalog. The catalog is wonderful for showing the enormous number of galaxies around the Milky Way. There are 1.14 million in this catalog (still, just the tip of the iceberg), but we do not show them all when you start up the Extragalactic Atlas. In fact, we only display 15% of the galaxies by default; your screen would be nothing more than a plethora of points if the full set was displayed.

Oh, you want to see that? Well, fire up the Extragalactic Atlas and turn on the 2MASS Galaxies.

Before we dive in, check out the data and preset selections available to you. In the 2MASS Galaxy Catalog section in the DU Guide, look over the tables that describe the data available, extra data associated with each galaxy, and the selection expressions that allow you to cull portions of these data.

We can use these expressions to selectively see different parts of these data if we learn how to use the command line (the gray box beside the "Cmd"). Using the Partiview command see, type see all to reveal all 1.1 million galaxies. Pretty crowded, huh?

Luckily, I have added some selection expressions to make it easy to manipulate these data. To return to the default state with 85% of the galaxies removed, type see lss. By removing the more isolated field galaxies in blue, the large-scale structure (hence, lss) is easier to see.

If you want to have a sense of the galaxy clusters that surround us, type see clusters at the command line and orbit Home. Our nearest neighbors are the Fornax Cluster, in the direction of Fornax in the sky, and the Virgo Cluster, the large, galaxy-rich cluster in the constellation of Virgo. Each of these clusters is a goldmine for astrophysicists, providing invaluable knowledge toward our understanding of galaxy clusters and superclusters.

Try some of the other 2MASS selection expressions to learn more about the galaxies that surround us. Next time, I'll discuss the various catalogs that make up the 2MASS Galaxies.

Welcome to the new Digital Universe blog. In this blog we will address a wide range of topics such as new data acquisitions, the science of the atlas, Partiview tips, and Digital Universe visualizations. We also hope to occasionally highlight your experience as a user. If you have experiences you'd like to share with the community, please submit them via e-mail (choose the Digital Universe category).

Stay tuned to this blog category for the latest on the Digital Universe.