Every source you see is one draw from a posterior over catalogs of the Dark Energy
Survey sky — not an entry in a list. Three independent draws are plotted. Where they agree,
the sky is certain; where they disagree, the data genuinely does not settle what is there.
Posterior samples
Faint limit
Compare
What am I looking at?
A traditional survey catalog is a single list: this object exists, its magnitude is that.
Ours is a probability distribution over entire catalogs, so we can hand you samples from
it. Each sample is internally consistent — a complete, plausible account of the sky.
Blinking between them shows the uncertainty directly. Faint and blended sources flicker,
because whether they are one source or two, star or galaxy, is exactly what the pixels
leave open. Bright, isolated sources sit still in all three. Blink frames use the same
marker style; with blinking off, the selector identifies the draw on display.