SPHEREx's First All-Sky Maps: Panorama | NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

SPHEREx's First All-Sky Maps: Panorama | NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

This panoramic video shows a 3D view of the universe using data from NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer telescope (SPHEREx). The SPHEREx observatory looks out into space and maps the entire sky, like scanning the inside of a globe. It observes 102 infrared colors, just a few of which are shown here. The video transitions between one all-sky map featuring infrared colors emitted by hot hydrogen gas (represented by blue) and cosmic dust (red), and a second all-sky view showing infrared colors primarily emitted by stars and galaxies.

SPHEREx is NASA’s newest space telescope that “will observe hundreds of millions of galaxies and other objects during its two-year mission, mapping the cosmos in wavelengths invisible to the human eye”.

The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data is being conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data is processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more about SPHEREx, visit: 
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech
Duration: 50 seconds
Release Date: Dec. 17, 2025

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