The dark energy instrument is located in the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and is tasked with charting the expansion of space, investigating dark energy, and creating the most detailed 3D map of the universe.
We have a record-breaking, jaw-dropping, three-dimensional picture of the galaxy that's all around us, proving the capabilities of DESI and the potential it has for mapping space.
More than 7.5 million galaxies have been cataloged and charted by DESI, with more than a million new ones added each month. By the time the scans is over, it is thought that over 35 million galaxies will have been mapped, providing astronomer with a huge library of data.
"There is a lot of beauty to it," says an astronomer.
There are huge clusters in the distribution of the galaxies. They are the biggest structures in the universe. There is an imprint of the very early Universe within them.
Each optical fiber is individually controlled and positioned by a tiny robot. The fibers have to be positioned to within 10 microns, or less than the thickness of a human hair, and they capture a glimpse of light as they pass down to Earth.
The instrument takes color spectrum images of millions of galaxies, covering more than a third of the entire sky, before calculating how much light has been redshifted due to the expansion of the spectrum.
It's possible to use redshift data to see depth in the Universe because it takes several billion years for this light to reach Earth. The structures mapped by DESI can be reversed to see the initial formation that they started out in.
Data from the Berkeley Lab andDESI.
The first few months of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument are depicted in the right.
The main goal of DESI is to reveal more about the dark energy that is thought to make up 70% of the Universe as well as speeding up its expansion. The dark energy could cause the universe to collapse, or it could cause the universe to expand into an infinite expansion.
"DESI will help us to find out more about the nature of dark energy," said Carlos Frenk, a cosmologist from Durham University in the UK.
We will learn more about the dark matter and how it contributes to the evolution of the universe.
Scientists don't have to wait for DESI to finish its work to start benefiting from its deep look into space, as shown by the 3D map that has already been released. Smaller galaxies may have their own black holes like larger ones.
It's not easy to see gas, dust, and other material being dragged into a black hole in a smaller galaxies, but the high-precision data collected by DESI should help with that.
The study of quasars, particularly bright galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, act as signposts back through billions of years of space history. The hypothesis is that quasars start off surrounded by an envelope of dust that gets driven off as time goes on.
Dust around a quasar is thought to affect the color of the light it gives off, which makes it a perfect job for DESI. The instrument should be able to collect information on over two million quasars by the time it is done.
"DESI picks up a lot of fainter and redder objects, which is great," says astronomer Victoria Fawcett from Durham University.
Large samples of rare objects that we haven't been able to study before are among the exotic systems we're finding.
You can find the latest news from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at its official home page.
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