Multimedia Gallery
Artist’s depiction of DESI first year data slice
In this artistic rendering, a slice of the 3D map of galaxies collected in the first year of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey appears in a rainbow of color above the NSF Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, on which DESI is mounted. Earth is at the tip of the map, with the furthest galaxies plotted at distances of 11 billion light-years. Each point represents one galaxy. This version of the map includes 600,000 galaxies — less than 0.1% of the survey's full volume.
[NOIRLab is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.]
Learn more in the NSF Research News story Dark energy survey looks 11 billion years into the past, reveals most detailed view ever of expanding universe. (Date of image: April 04, 2024; date posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: May 17, 2024)
Credit: DESI Collaboration/NSF NOIRLab/KPNO/AURA/P. Horálek/R. Proctor (available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)
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