Less than a year after its launch, NASA’s SPHEREx observatory has mapped the sky, painting the entire universe in 102 colors invisible to the human eye.
The project has the potential to help astronomers solve some of the greatest mysteries in the cosmos. Importantly, NASA hopes the map will provide insight into the first split-second after the big bang and a process called inflation.
“We essentially have 102 new maps of the entire sky, each in a different wavelength and containing unique information about the objects they see,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. “I think every astronomer will find something valuable here, as NASA missions allow the world to answer fundamental questions about how the universe came to be and how it changed to ultimately make it a home for us.”
Create a colorful cosmic map
NASA’s Spectrophotometer for the History of the Universe, Reionization Epoch, and Ice Explorer (SPHEREx) was launched on March 11, 2025 and began the process of mapping the cosmos in May. Six months later, he carried out his first complete scan of the sky.
This is an intensive process that allowed the telescope to orbit the Earth approximately 14.5 times per day. Every 24 hours, approximately 600 exposures are required, each sent to six detectors coupled with a 17-color gradient filter, resulting in approximately 3,600 images. Once the exposure is complete, the observatory moves, ready to take the next one.
Through this process, called spectroscopy, astronomers captured the entire sky in 102 colors, each representing a wavelength of the infrared spectrum. It’s not the first time a telescope has taken an image of the entire sky, but none has done so with so many wavelengths or colors, astronomers say.
“I think this makes us the mantis shrimp of telescopes, because we have an incredible multicolor visual detection system and we can also see a very broad swath of our environment,” Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx project manager at JPL, said in the release.
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Solve cosmic mysteries
SPHEREx is mid-mission and will continue to orbit Earth for about 18 more months, during which time it will perform three more sky scans.
By the end of the mission, the telescope will have completed more than 11,000 orbits around the planet and collected data on more than 450 million galaxies. Using this information, scientists will create 3D maps of galaxies, calculate the distance to distant galaxies and determine variations in their distribution. This will allow researchers to trace their evolution through cosmic history and look for substances like water that are vital to life.
It is also hoped that the data collected will lead to discoveries that will improve our understanding of what happened immediately after the big bang, during a process called inflation. This inflation period lasted only a fraction of a second (10 to 32 seconds to be precise). During this period, the universe has expanded significantly, increasing by a factor of 1,030, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). Events in such a short period of time – including random quantum fluctuations – have shaped the current appearance of the universe.
“SPHEREx is a medium-sized astrophysics mission delivering big science,” JPL Director Dave Gallagher said in the release.
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