This is the web-site of the book "Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story". It contains additional material to the book. This material (except papers available in the ADS) is the property of the author, it is intended for personal and non-commercial use. If you want to use material from this web-site in presentations or publications please cite the book. For reproduction or re-encoding please ask for a permission from the author (jaan.einasto@to.ee). The site consists of four parts.
Part I. Additions to the Book
After the book was finished I found some new material which deserves mentioning here.
First of all, I had the possibility to read the book by Henning von Wistinghausen “Im freien Estland: Erinnerungen des ersten deutschen Botschafters 1991-1995” (Estonian Edition 2008). The Von Wistinghausen family has lived in Estonia more than 300 years, and has many personal connections in Estonia. He discussed in detail the freedom movement in Estonia, Latvia and Russia. His observations of the events were much more detailed than my own because he had the possibility to be present in many events and discussions with Estonian leaders. In his opinion the highlights of the freedom movement were the Estonian Supreme Soviet sovereignty declaration on November 16, 1988, the denouncing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies on December 24, 1989, the speech of Arnold Rüütel in the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies on December 18, 1990, and the signing of mutual recognition documents by Boris Yeltsin and Arnold Rüütel on January 12, 1991, which was the basis of the recognition of Estonian independence after the August Coup on August 24, 1991. Von Wistinghausen gave a very detailed record of the December 18, 1990 speech of Arnold Rüütel. In his opinion this was one of the great political speeches of the time which changed the world.
Henning von Wistinghausen described also the deep cultural and economical connections between the Baltic Germans and Estonians, the role of the Baltic Germans in the awakening movement in Estonia in the 19th Century, the role of the Tartu University in developing the modern scientific culture in Estonia, and the participation of the Baltic Germans in the Independence War against the bolshevik Russia. He also mentioned one of the sad moments in these relations - the short war between the Estonian army and the Landeswehr in June 1919, which distorted the relations between the Estonians and Baltic Germans for some time.
My own observations of this time confirm most of von Wistinghausen conclusions. Even more: the attitude of Estonians to Germans changed completely during the WW II. We had the first year of Soviet occupation with massive killings, deportation etc. Earlier many Estonians considered Germans as historical enemies (seven hundred years of serfdom), now they were allies in the fight against bolshevism. I remember this time very well. There was almost no hostility between ordinary German Wehrmacht soldiers and Estonian civil population during the war. After the end of the war German prisoners of war (POW) worked in Estonia, helping to build up the damaged economy. On weekends and evenings after the work the prisoners had the possibility to move almost freely in Tartu, some of them visited Estonian families. Once one POW visited our family and we discovered that he was a musician - an organist. So my mother gave him volumes of Bach’s organ music for reading. Sometimes later he brought the notes back and was very thankful, for him reading Bach notes was as joyful as playing the organ in a church.
One German POW working in Tartu was an astronomer, Dr. Wilhelm Gliese. He tried to contact our astronomers, but was soon sent to some other camp. I heard of him from another POW, but it was already late to meet him. We met first during the 1958 IAU General Assembly in Moscow, and became good friends. He helped to organise for me an invitation to visit the Astronomisches Recheninstitut in Heidelberg. This was my first visit to a Western country alone without accompanying Soviet delegates. I spent this one-month visit basically in Heidelberg, discussing the dark matter problem. Prof. W. Fricke, director of the Institute, arranged for me a tour of other German observatories, so I had a chance to visit the Astronomical Institute of the Munich University, the Hamburg (Bergedorf) Observatory, and the Bonn University Observatory.
After Estonia restored independence, Baltic Germans helped to restore the cultural links between Estonia and Germany: there exists an Estonian-German Society with houses in Tallinn, Tartu and other cities. There are similar societies for other minorities: the Jewish Community of Estonia, the Estonian Roma Association, the Swedish Congregation, the Tatarian Cultural Center etc.
Another very interesting book on the development of the situation in Baltic countries was written by the head of the Swedish consulate in Leningrad in 1989-1991, Dag Sebastian Ahlander, “Spelet om Baltikum” (“Play over Baltics”), also translated into Estonian. Both diplomats, Henning von Wistinghausen and Dag Sebastian Ahlander, were heads of the consulates in Leningrad, and Tallinn and Riga were counted as belonging to the region of the responsibility of the Leningrad consulate both of Germany and Sweden. Thus these two diplomats had the unique possibility to observe very closely the events in the Baltic countries in those critical days. Both diplomats followed the development completely independently. I do not know them personally, thus it is interesting to note that their estimates of the political development in Estonia, and the role of the various political activities in the freedom movement, were very close to my own observations. After Estonia restored its independence and was recognised by the Russian Federation and the European countries, Sweden and Germany were the first countries who opened their Embassies in Tallinn already by the end of August 1991.
A few words on the development after the end of the cold war. On 1995 I participated in a small conference in Copenhagen to celebrate the 60th birthday of my friend and colleague Igor Novikov. Among the guests was a Russian physicist. In his speech in the banquet of the conference he warned of the possible political development in Russia. In his opinion there existed a danger of dictatorship, because the economical and political problems in Russia had similarities to the situation after WW I. Similar problems were discussed by Edward Lucas and Mark MacKinnon, who both wrote books titled “The New Cold War” (printed by Bloomsbury, Great Britain 2008, and Random House, Canada 2007, respectively).
Part II. Copies of original versions of some key papers of the Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story:
The paper (1) is the first known paper on the estimation of the matter density in the Solar vicinity.
The paper (3) is the preprint of the paper by J. Einasto: "Galactic Models and Stellar Orbits", Stars and the Milky Way System, Proceedings of the First European Astronomical Meeting. September 4 - 9, 1972. Vol. 2: Stars and the Milky Way System, 169, 1974. In these papers it was shown that there exist two different dark matter problems, the Local and the Global Dark Matter, which have different distributions and nature.
The paper (4) is the preprint of the respective paper in `Nature', it contains 2 tables which by misunderstanding were omitted in the Nature version.
The paper (5) is the preprint of the respective paper in `Monthly Notices'. This preprint and the Symposium talk (M. Jõeveer, J. Einasto: “Has the Universe the Cell Structure?”, The large scale structure of the universe; Proceedings of the Symposium, Tallinn, September 12-16, 1977. Reidel Publ. Co., 1978, 241) contain all the principal data and arguments suggesting the presence of the cosmic web and the cellular structure of the Universe.
The paper (6) is the preprint (Letter version) of the paper by Ya. B. Zeldovich, J. Einasto, S.F. Shandarin: "Giant voids in the Universe", Nature, 300, 407, 1982.
The file of paper (7) was made by scanning personal reprint of the paper, ordered from the journal.
Part III. Astronomical movies
The first movie was demonstrated by Yakov Zeldovich during the Tallinn IAU Symposium in 1977 - this was the first demonstration how the Zeldovich pancake model works.
The next two movies show the distribution of galaxies. To see the third dimension galaxy positions in rectangular coordinates are rotated. Distances are given in megaparsecs using the Hubble constant H=100 km/s per megaparsec. Both movies are based on essentially identical observational data, collected in 1981 using the Huchra ZCAT and other available data. To suppress the finger-of-god effect relative redshifts of galaxies in groups and clusters were compressed so that cluster sizes in tangential and radial direction were approximately equal. Data used for this procedure were published by Einasto et al, MNRAS, 206, 529, 1984, MNRAS, 219, 457, 1986.
The original frames of the first of these movies were prepared at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, of the second movie at the NASA-AMES centre. 16-mm copies of both movies were made in the Tartu University Multimedia Service. To prepare the movies for the use in modern computers 16-mm movies were projected to a screen and filmed with a digital camera. A lot of work was needed to reduce noise and other defects; most titles were written using modern techniques preserving the content of original titles of movies. The post-production was made by the Tartu University Multimedia Service.
Parts 1 and 2 of the first movie show the distribution of galaxies in the Virgo supercluster. Here the dominant element is the Virgo cluster, surrounded by relatively small sheets of galaxies and several long filaments of galaxies, extending in different directions as legs of a spider.
Parts 3 and 4 show the environs of the Virgo supercluster and its connection to the Coma supercluster. Here the essential features are the filaments connecting the Virgo and Coma superclusters, the large void between these superclusters (the Northern Local Void), and some filaments of galaxies crossing the void.
Part 5 has a radius 105 Mpc/h and is centred at the Local Void, 70 Mpc/h away from the plane of the Virgo supercluster. The most densely populated region is the Virgo and Coma superclusters complex with some other rich clusters, forming a wall. The other region populated with clusters is located on the other side of the Local void. This region contains the Hercules supercluster and some other rich complexes of clusters. The absence of clusters inside the Local void is clearly seen, here only faint galaxy filaments are located.
Part 6 is a sphere with a radius 160 Mpc/h around our Galaxy. He we can see the distribution of rich clusters of galaxies.
The second observational movie follows the scheme of the first one, here more data on the samples of galaxies is shown.
The fourth movie shows the distribution of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey superclusters. Here only galaxies belonging to the superclusters are shown, and each supercluster has a different colour. Galaxies outside superclusters are not shown, so the bridges between the superclusters can not be seen.
The fifth movie is a flight through the Main sample of galaxies of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The frames show the luminosity density field in shells in the SDSS coordinates in a narrow distance interval. The luminosity density field has been estimated using a smoothing length about 1 Mpc/h. One frame shows the mean density averaged in shells around the central shell with weights decreasing with the distance from the central shell, shown in the upper right corner; the X,Y-coordinates are also shown. The distance step between the frames is 0.2 Mpc/h. The luminosity density is plotted as the square-root of the density to show best the weak filaments between richer systems.
The movie shows the filamentary character of the cosmic web, its cellular structure with large low-density regions, superclusters, and filaments connecting all elements in the web. The movie starts at a distance D = 35 Mpc/h, here sections of filaments joining the Local supercluster with the Coma supercluster are well seen. The rich structure at D = 70 Mpc/h is the Coma supercluster with it’s two main clusters, A1656 (the Coma cluster) and A1367 (the Leo cluster). We see also in the left part of the picture a large region of low density crossed only by faint filaments. This is the Northern Local Void. In the distance interval D = 90 … 120 Mpc/h we see the filamentary Hercules supercluster, which dominates the left side of the picture. Behind the Hercules supercluster we see in the same region a large underdense region - the Bootes void, which is crossed by several weak galaxy filaments. Starting from the distance D = 220 Mpc/h we see in the lower central region a rich complex of clusters, filaments and superclusters, which has the highest density at the distance D = 250 Mpc/h. This is the Sloan Great Wall - a system of several very rich superclusters.
Part IV. Private data
My family tree is shown here Jaan_EinastoF.pdf.
My ancestors on my grandmother’s Anna Lammas (Wiegant) Viking line can be found on the file
This page shows the Viking (Varangian) origin of the Russian rulers, their relationship to Scandinavian and German kings and other noble families. Some of my ancestors had a direct connection to Estonia -- Yaroslav the Wise founded Tartu (Yurjev) in 1030, Prince Vyachko of Koknese and Estonian troops defended Tartu in 1224 against the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, he was killed during the battle. Vyachko’s great-grandson Johann de Thisenhusen was the founder of one of the wealthiest and most important Baltic German noble families.
Other lines go to the ancient Rome, Armenia and Persia
to mediaeval Hungary and Huns, including Attila and his Mongolian predecessors
and over kings of Armenia and Egyptian Pharaohs to kings of Macedonia, including Alexander III
My CV and pictures from my country-home (Egeri Story and Egeri Contemplations) are made from presentations transformed into movies in m4v format. “Egeri 1998” is a documental movie of the restoration of Egeri and the family celebration, finished by the help of the Tartu University Multimedia Service Production.
