"Countdown, five, four, three, two, one, zero, ignition! ……”

At the Lingshan Rocket Launch Base, in the control building, dozens of technicians in white were staring closely at the display screen in front of them. Others stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, looking expectantly at the huge rocket, two or three kilometers away, with only a faint outline.

The Mercury space telescope is now folded and curled up in the rocket compartment.

It is one of the most advanced space telescopes recently developed by the human world. With infrared and visible light resolution and sensitivity far greater than any previous space telescope, it can theoretically detect objects as bright as 1/50 billion of the most advanced space telescopes of the previous generation.

Many scientific scholars have high hopes for it. It is expected that the Mercury space telescope will be able to observe the early evolution of the universe as clearly as possible from the closest perspective like Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, find the light of the first stars and galaxies formed in the universe after the Big Bang, study the formation and evolution of galaxies, and even study the origin of planetary systems and life.

This is the most important step ever taken by the human world in the history of space exploration.

In the footage of media reporters, the commander-in-chief of the launch mission gave the launch order sonorously and forcefully. The next moment, the camera placed near the rocket captured the scene of flames suddenly rising from the bottom of the rocket.

The astonishing heat was emitted everywhere, and the water used for cooling at the bottom of the rocket was instantly steamed, and in the midst of the clouds, the heavy rocket slowly rose up, making a loud noise like a tractor, and spread through a radius of several kilometers.

The rocket is getting faster and faster. In just a few moments, it flew through the clouds and disappeared into the sky.

There was a brief round of applause in the control room.

Countless viewers who watched the live broadcast of the launch in front of the TV heard the news of the next step from the mouth of the host.

"The rocket has successfully entered the intended orbit. After that, it will circle the Earth for more than ten weeks, slowly accelerating in the process, breaking free from the Earth's gravity and stepping into deep space at the right time. In about a week's time, it will reach the second Lagrange point of the Sun, the Earth, where it will complete its attitude adjustment and carry out subsequent observations.

The telescope control team said it is expected to take about half a year to debug and verify it after it arrives at its intended location. If all goes well, in about a year's time, the first images taken by the Mercury space telescope will be processed and released to the world. Audience friends, let's look forward to it together. ”

……

Two years later.

In the Deep Space Laboratory Building of Yunshan University, Professor Zhou Tianyang, who is over fifty years old, slowly walked to the office of his team.

"Professor Zhou, morning."

"Morning, Professor."

Facing the joyful and high-spirited greetings of his researchers, Zhou Tianyang couldn't help but smile on his face.

"Hello everyone. Well, how are the preparations going? ”

"Don't worry, Professor, you can't make mistakes!"

Zhou Tianyang glared at him and reprimanded: "Don't be careless! Check the process again! ”

Although it was a reprimand on the surface, the tone was full of concern and love.

This is one of the students he cares about the most. At a young age, under his own guidance, he has led three large-scale deep space observation projects and published three papers with high impact factors, which has gained a certain reputation in the academic community.

If there is no accident, this time the deep space observation project, when the final paper is produced, I plan to let him sign the second work. For a young man in his thirties, it is impossible to know what this means.

At that time, he can really go out independently, set up his own team, and strive for funds to carry out further, more in-depth and cutting-edge research.

The student named Wang Yue agreed, and led the junior brothers and sisters to start a serious and meticulous inspection again. Zhou Tianyang was relieved and joined the test.

There is no reason why Zhou Tianyang is not cautious. It has been two years since the launch of the Mercury space telescope, and after preliminary debugging and verification, it officially began deep space exploration a year and a half ago. The observation mission submitted by his team finally started yesterday after a year and a half of queuing.

The telescope will point the lens at a tiny angle in the direction of Sirius and observe the corner of the planet for three full days, exposing it for three full days.

Because the light of distant galaxies is so faint. Even if you use the most advanced telescope in the human world, it is impossible to see clearly. If you want to collect more data, you can only increase the observation time.

There have been many such attempts in the history of deep space observations. One of the most famous is the three composite images taken by the Hubble Telescope, namely Hubble Deep Field, Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and Hubble Extreme Deep Field.

In Hubble's extreme deep field, the Hubble Space Telescope targets a small area in the constellation Celestia, with a cumulative exposure time of up to 2 million seconds, and the luminosity of the faintest galaxy in the image is even only 10 billionths of the lower limit of the speed of light visible to the naked eye.

And, in such a corner of the universe, there are tens of thousands of huge river systems. Each of them is on the same order of magnitude as the Milky Way, in which the human world lives.

The vastness of the universe is presented to people in such an extreme way.

At this moment, the research conducted by Zhou Tianyang's team is similar to that of Hubble Deep Field. The difference is that the goal of Zhou Tianyang's team is not to have multiple river systems in the universe, but only one.

This galaxy, designated CSK-9602 in the Deep Sky Catalog, is roughly located in the direction of Sirius, about 160 million light-years away from the Solar System. It is about 70,000 light-years in diameter, and in total, it is composed of about 100 billion stars.

It is a ring-shaped galaxy. According to analysis, it is highly likely that hundreds of millions of years ago, a smaller galaxy collided with it, and the gravitational forces of each other engaged each other, throwing a large number of stars to the edge of the galaxy, forming a ring that orbits the core of the galaxy.

A ring, plus a core, to make it look like an eye. It's like having a huge eye gazing at everything in the universe. As a result, in addition to the official deep-sky catalog number, it also has another name, the Magic Eye Galaxy.

Zhou Tianyang believes that the study of the magic eye galaxy is of great significance to increase mankind's understanding of the evolution of galaxies. However, due to the limitations of previous observation tools, the human world does not know much about the Magic Eye Galaxy, except for a few photos of relatively large lakes.

Because of this, Zhou Tianyang did not hesitate to queue for more than a year, and finally waited for the observation time of the Mercury space telescope, and planned to use these three days to observe it well.

Soon, all the data collected over the course of three days – expected to be up to several hundred terabytes – will soon be in his lab. We must process and analyze this batch of data as quickly as possible, carry out follow-up research, make final conclusions, and publish papers.

Because as far as Zhou Tianyang knows, in the scientific community, there are at least four deep space observation teams that have carried out research in a similar direction with the same purpose as his own team. Once someone else preempts the research results and the research results are published by others first, then the hard work of your team in the past two years, if not in vain, at least the value is greatly reduced.

Fortunately, Yunshan University, where his laboratory is located, also participated in the development and launch of the Mercury Space Telescope, and has a certain say in the whole project, so that it can be the turn of its own mission to observe only two years after launch.

After carefully verifying the data pathway, model construction, supercomputing power scheduling and other links, and confirming that everything is correct, Professor Zhou Tianyang's heart can be regarded as letting go.

Time passed slowly in the expectation of Zhou Tianyang's team members. At this moment, it is finally time to receive the data.

The data has been transmitted from the Mercury space telescope to the ground control center via a relay satellite. The data interface has been opened and the download process has begun.

At the moment, on average, up to one gigabyte of data is downloaded over a dedicated broadband every second.

It is expected to take about a week to download all the data.

Fortunately, the amount of data is not very large. If there is more data, then the ultimate trick of data transfer is needed - find a big truck and pull back the hard drive that records the data directly from the ground control center.

After another week of anxious waiting, the data was finally downloaded.

On this day, the whole team, from Professor Zhou Tianyang to the intern researchers, were all in high spirits. According to the plan that had been formulated long ago, Zhou Tianyang gave an order, and everyone rushed to the computer like a tiger out of the cage, and began data analysis and sorting, as well as research work.

When the data is actually processed, people are completely immersed in the vastness and magnificence of the universe. Many details have been unearthed through this observation, and each new discovery will cause people to exclaim.

"There are a large number of star factories in the Magic Eye Galaxy, and it is estimated that at least hundreds of thousands of stars are being formed, which is completely different from what we expected."

"The metallicity also deviated from the predicted value. Perhaps, the smaller galaxy that merged with the MONOCULUS galaxy has more older stars in it? ”

New details, new discoveries, all the time stimulate people's nerves. At this moment, people have a vague premonition that this research will surely lead to many new discoveries of extremely high weight.

After completing the initial collation, about a month later, the first result of the observation, a full HD image of the Magic Eye Galaxy, was finally synthesized.

Normally, the magnificent deep space pictures that people see, such as Hubble Deep Field, such as the Pillars of Creation, the Aquila Nebula, etc., are not real shots. Those colorful colors are artificially added after post-processing.

Different temperatures, densities, element compositions, object forms, etc., will be represented by different brightness and colors. Once these details are added, a deep sky image can be generated. But it can be completely different from what it sees with the naked eye.

At this moment, the high-definition map of the Magic Eye Galaxy synthesized by Zhou Tianyang's team is different from the previous practice. This time, Professor Zhou Tianyang strives to be "real", although there are some synthetic places, but he believes that if one day, someone really looks at the magic eye galaxy from the right angle and distance, and what they see must be similar to the picture he synthesized.

At this moment, all the researchers gathered in the conference room, looking expectantly at the curtain hanging in front of them. Professor Zhou Tianyang walked in with a smile on his face.

After a brief speech, all windows in the conference room were covered and all lights were turned off. In the darkness, Professor Zhou Tianyang pressed the button, and the laser projector began to work.

The next moment, an "eye" with some kind of magical power appeared on the curtain.

Radiant and radiant, nebulae circulating, billions of stars ......

People's breathing comes to a halt without even realizing it. In the huge conference room, you can hear a pin dropping.

All the attention of the people is drawn to this picture. It was as if the soul had crossed a distance of more than 100 million light-years at this moment and plunged into this galaxy of magnificence and splendor.

Many people even shed tears at this moment.

After a long time, someone gradually came back to his senses, but he could only keep repeating one word in his mouth.

"It's beautiful, it's beautiful......"

People don't know what words to use to describe it other than this word.

It wasn't until Professor Zhou Tianyang turned on the light, and after the light interfered and the picture of the Magic Eye Galaxy on the curtain was no longer so gorgeous, people reluctantly withdrew their gaze, but they still involuntarily glanced at it every few seconds.

It's as if it really has some kind of magical, enough magic to be addicted to.

Professor Zhou Tianyang also reluctantly retracted his gaze and said, "This is just a preliminary picture. There are also a lot of details that are not filled. After our analysis and research work goes further, I believe that this picture will be more magnificent and more gorgeous. ”

Everyone is confident in this.

After the celebration party, Professor Zhou Tianyang dragged his slightly tired body and still excited spirit back home.

His wife and children were asleep at the moment. After Zhou Tianyang washed lightly, he lay down on the bed and planned to sleep.

But I don't know why, he has always had good sleep quality, but today he has insomnia. He would always involuntarily recall the picture of the Magic Eye Galaxy, and his heart would be like a kitten scratching, always wanting to take another look.

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