2023-06-15 09:34:08
For the first time, scientists have observed two million distant galaxies, quasars and stars, helping to create the most detailed 3D map of the universe ever and increasing our understanding of the universe and our own Milky Way.
According to RT, scientists used the Dark Energy Spectroscopy (DESI) instrument to take thousands of images of the night sky. A team from Durham University has observed spectra from extragalactic objects that split light into different colors or wavelengths that reveal the expansion rate of the universe, as well as the physical properties of galaxies and quasars.
The first batch of 80 terabytes of study data from more than 3,500 exposures of the night sky captured over a six-month period during the “Scanner Validation” pilot phase in 2020 and 2021.
The latest release of this data is the first step in a project to map more than 40 million galaxies, quasars and stars.
Durham University professor Carlos Frink said: “Project DESI is the most ambitious project to date. It seeks to answer some of science’s most fundamental questions: What is our universe made of? How did it become like this. What is the future?
He continued: Astronomers at Durham play a leading role in this major international collaboration and are at the forefront of efforts to interpret the unique data provided by DESI.
The five-year DESI project, run by the US Department of Energy through California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, aims to map the large-scale structure of our universe on a large scale and a wide range of cosmic ages.
DESI uses regarding 5,000 robotic positioning devices to move optical fibers that capture light from objects millions or billions of light-years away.
DESI is the world’s most powerful multi-object scanning spectrometer, an instrument that separates and measures wavelengths of light in the universe. It can analyze light from more than 100,000 galaxies in one night, a world record, and that light tells scientists how far away an object is, how fast the universe is expanding, and how a three-dimensional map of its distribution is generated. of galaxies
1686822234
#Scientists #monitor #million #galaxies #stars #time #creating #map #universe
