New Lenses To Help In The Hunt For Dark Energy

By Matthew Williams March 18, 2016
New Lenses To Help In The Hunt For Dark Energy

Each of these lenses comes equipped with 5000 optical fibers, similar to kind of cables used for high-speed data traffic (i.e. internet and telecommunications). They will give the 4-meter telescope a very wide field of view and be able to detect the light coming from 5000 galaxies at a time. This light will then be directed to the 30 cameras and spectrographs that are connected to the Mayall telescope, which the science team will then measure to gauge its redshift.

"The recently completed spectroscopic survey project, BOSS, measured 1.5 million galaxies.  With the DESI project we plan on increasing that to 30 million galaxies, and extend both the volume and depth of the survey to chart the effects of dark energy with unprecedented precision. DESI will chart the history of the Universe going back 11 billion years and create an extremely precise 3D map."

Matthew Williams

Matthew Williams

Matt Williams is a space journalist, science communicator, and author with several published titles and studies. His work is featured in The Ross 248 Project and Interstellar Travel edited by NASA alumni Les Johnson and Ken Roy. He also hosts the podcast series Stories from Space at ITSP Magazine. He lives in beautiful British Columbia with his wife and family. For more information, check out his website.