Scientists from the United States are developing one of the most ambitious projects to compile a three-dimensional map of the universe and study dark energy and its effects.
Astronomers, engineers and students are busy collecting the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) for a five-year mission with the Mayalla 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, and measuring the spectrum of over 30 million galaxies and quasars.
The DESI instrument will use a new corrective optics providing a three-degree field of view that supplies a focal plane equipped with five thousand robotic "positioners" with optical cables. The positioners can be rearranged in a few minutes to obtain spectra of different sets of galaxies, which are then sent to ten broadband spectrographs, each of which has three detectors.
The assembly process of the tool can be seen in the video below:
According to plans, DESI will study the nature of dark energy - a mysterious force apparently accelerating the expansion of the universe. To do this, scientists intend to create a three-dimensional map of millions of galaxies to characterize two critical indicators of the evolution of the Universe: ancient traces of baryonic acoustic oscillations (sound waves traveling through space in the so-called dark ages before the formation of stars), as well as distortions in space-time caused by large-scale structures.
“The mystery of dark energy and the constant appeal of cosmology motivate a variety of cosmological experiments,” reads the DESI website. - DESI is one of the most ambitious projects in development. Once it begins its work, it will become the largest study of galaxies in redshift."
In addition to studying the effects of dark energy, DESI cards can be used for other research purposes.
Promotional video:
“We hope that our measurements of the intermediate redshift amplitude of a large-scale structure will be important for measuring neutrino mass,” the website says. "Our calculations at the largest scales can test whether the initial perturbations in the Universe follow the simplest model, or vice versa: show ratios indicating new behavior at the highest energetic values in the first second of the Universe."
Vladimir Guillen