The BOSS team, which is made up of personnel from 42 different institutions, is focused on measuring the spectra, or colors, of galaxies and quasars. That information enables astronomers to determine how far away and how far back in time the celestial objects they're observing are.

"The data from BOSS will be the best ever obtained on the large-scale structure of the universe," said BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in a statement.