Overview
- Researchers finished the DESI survey after five years, logging redshifts for about 47 million galaxies and quasars and 20 million stars to build the most detailed 3D map of the cosmos yet.
- The team will now process the full dataset for months, with the first dark-energy findings from the complete survey expected in 2027.
- Early analyses based on DESI’s first three years suggested dark energy may change over time, a claim the full dataset will test with far stronger evidence.
- DESI’s instrument uses 5,000 robotic fiber positioners and ten spectrographs to grab roughly 80 gigabytes of spectra per night, covering about 14,000 square degrees so far with plans to grow toward 17,000 by continuing through 2028.
- More than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions power the project, managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Kitt Peak in Arizona, which kept the survey on track despite a 2022 wildfire-related outage.