A Glimpse of the Very Early Universal Web

Thanks to the great light-gathering capabilily of the VLT and the excellent FORS1 multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m ANTU telescope, spectra of eight, faint Lyman-alpha objects were obtained in March 2000 that allowed measuring their exact redshifts and hence, their distances [2]. When two co-ordinates from the position in the sky were combined with the measured redshifts into a three-dimensional map, the astronomers found that all of the objects lie within a thin, well-defined filament.

ESO Press Video eso0120 provides an animated view of the spatial configuration of the filaments and the observed objects.