The 'cosmic web' of large-scale structure connects galaxies and galaxy halos through a filamentary network, with sheets and filaments separated by cosmic voids. This structure arises from the geometrical properties of the initial density field together with evolution through anisotropic gravitational collapse. Here, a visualization of this skeleton of the cosmic web as seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7, determined through the DISPERSE algorithm. This scale-free algorithm is based on topological persistence, and the skeleton is made up of the critical lines connecting density peaks, based on the discrete Morse-Smale complex.

Methods: DisPerSe code