Astronomers present the largest map of the universe

A large team of scientists working with DESI, designed to perform spectrographic astronomical studies of distant galaxies, has already mapped more galaxies in space than any other device. And yet, its work is only 10% complete.

DESI has already collected a cosmic "web" of more than 7.5 million galaxies, and will continue to scan up to at least 40 million. The device measures the exact distances to galaxies and their emitted light in a range of wavelengths, achieving both quantitative and qualitative measures. It will eventually cover about 20 percent of the sky.

A DESI project scientist said that each morning scientists receive data on 100,000 galaxies collected overnight.

DESI consists of several instruments mounted in a 14-story telescope dome. The circular focal plane is located at the very top and consists of 10 wedge-shaped lobes, each consisting of 500 mechanisms. It is these that allow the instrument to create galactic cartography. Previously, scientists had to manually drill holes in the round aluminum plate in the telescope's focal plane for each set of measurements, and they inserted small fibers for each individual galaxy they wanted to observe.