dark matter<\/a>, gravitational lensing, and galactic morphology.\u201d<\/p>\nHow does DESI work?<\/h3>\n DESI employs 5,000 robotic positioners to operate optical fibres that capture light from objects in space \u2013 even some millions or billions of light-years away.<\/p>\n
This makes DESI the most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph globally and can measure light from over 100,000 galaxies in just one night. This helps researchers build a cosmic map of the Universe and understand dark energy.<\/p>\n
As the Universe expands, it stretches the wavelength of light \u2013 a phenomenon known as redshift. The further a galaxy is away, the larger the redshift is.<\/p>\n
DESI expertly collects redshifts to understand what dark energy is and how it has evolved throughout the history of the Universe.<\/p>\n
In addition to dark energy, DESI data includes images of some famous areas of the sky, such as the Hubble Deep Field, which will be essential in future astronomical studies.<\/p>\n
Stephen Bailey, a scientist at Berkeley Lab who leads data management for DESI, commented: \u201cThere are some well-trodden spots where we\u2019ve drilled down into the sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve taken valuable spectroscopic images in areas that are of interest to the rest of the community, and we\u2019re hoping that other people will take this data and do additional science with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does the data reveal about dark energy?<\/h3>\n DESI has made two groundbreaking discoveries \u2013 finding evidence of a mass migration of stars into the Andromeda galaxy, and extremely distant quasars.<\/p>\n
Anthony Kremin, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab who led the data processing, explained: \u201cPeople have looked at that data and discovered very high redshift quasars, which are still so rare that basically, any discovery of them is useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose high-redshift quasars are usually found with very large telescopes, so the fact that DESI \u2013 a smaller, 4-meter survey instrument \u2013 could compete with those larger, dedicated observatories was an achievement we are pretty proud of and demonstrates the exceptional throughput of the instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n
Validating the survey was also an opportunity to test the method of transforming raw data from DESI\u2019s ten spectrometers into useful information, as the spectrometers split a galaxy\u2019s light into a range of colours.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you looked at them, the images coming directly from the camera would look like nonsense \u2013 like lines on a weird, fuzzy image,\u201d said Laurie Stephey, a data architect at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the supercomputer that processes DESI\u2019s data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe magic happens in the processing and the software being able to decode the data. It\u2019s exciting that we have the technology to make that data accessible to the research community and that we can support this big question of \u2018what is dark energy?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nDESI collects spectra, the different frequencies of light that objects in space emit. That light tells researchers how far away the object is, meaning they can create a 3D map of the universe. This spectrum is from an incredibly distant quasar more than 12 billion light-years from Earth. The universe\u2019s expansion has stretched the light\u2019s wavelength and shifted it into the infrared. Credit: Eleanor Downing\/DESI collaboration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat does the future hold for the project?<\/h3>\n DESI is currently only two years into its five-year run \u2013 with plenty of data left to collect. It is estimated that DESI will obtain more than 40 million redshifts and has already catalogued over 26 million astronomical objects \u2013 around one million per month.<\/p>\n
In the coming years, DESI will potentially have acquired enough data to solve the mystery of dark energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first batch of data released by the\u00a0Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument\u00a0(DESI) has identified around two million interstellar objects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":33870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[771],"tags":[809],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument unveils two million celestial objects<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n