Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2024

29 JULY-AUGUST 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING While the expansion history of the Universe may be more complex than previously imag- ined, confirmation of this must await the completion of the DESI project. By the end of its five-year survey DESI plans to map over 3 mil- lion quasars and 37 mil- lion galaxies. As more data are released, as- tronomers will further improve their results. “This project is address- ing some of the biggest questions in astronomy, like the nature of the mysterious dark energy that drives the expan- sion of the Universe,” says Chris Davis, NSF program director for NOIRLab. “The excep- tional and continuing results yielded by the NSF Mayall telescope with DOE DESI will undoubtedly drive cosmology research for many years to come.” “We are delighted to see cosmol- ogy results from DESI’s first year of A n artist’s impression showing how the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) uses dis- tant quasars to map the large-scale structure of the Universe. As the quasars’ light travels across the cosmos it gets absorbed by intergalactic clouds of gas. This absorption can be de- tected in the light collected by DESI, allowing astronomers to map the pockets of dense matter. DESI is mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. [NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld] T his video summarizes the latest results achieved with DESI. [DESI Collabora- tion/KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R.T. Sparks/T. Slovinský/D. Kirkby/R. Proctor − Music: Produced by Konstantino Polizois] operations,” said Gina Rameika, as- sociate director for High Energy Physics at the Department of En- ergy. “DESI continues to amaze us with its stellar performance and how it is shaping our understanding of dark energy in the Universe.” Data from DESI’s survey will work harmoniously with future sky sur- veys conducted by Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with each instrument’s strength complement- ing the others. The DESI collaboration is currently investigating potential upgrades to the instrument and planning to ex- pand their cosmological exploration into a second phase, DESI-II, as rec- ommended in a recent report by the U.S. Particle Physics Project Prioriti- zation Panel. While the DESI year-one data are not yet publicly available, researchers can access the early data release as searchable databases of catalogs and spectra via the Astro Data Lab and SPARCL at the Community Sci- ence and Data Center, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. !