(ORDO NEWS) — There are many galaxies in the universe, each of which is filled to the brim with billions of stars.
By creating comprehensive maps of galaxies, astronomers can better understand the structure of the universe and unravel the mysterious properties of dark matter and dark energy.
The largest such map has just become even larger thanks to the tenth release of the Legacy Imaging Survey data from the DESI dark energy spectroscopy instrument.
The DESI Legacy Imaging Survey expands on data included in two previous companion surveys, the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Legacy Survey and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey.
Together, these three surveys captured 14,000 square degrees of Northern Hemisphere sky.
These efforts culminated in the largest 2D sky map ever made. One of the main objectives of this map is to identify approximately 40 million target galaxies for the five-year DESI spectroscopic study. Its goal is to study dark energy by accurately mapping the expansion history of the universe over the past 12 billion years.
The DESI project has chosen its targets and is currently conducting a spectroscopic study.
However, the team strives to create the most complete sky map possible, so more images have been added to older surveys and processing has been improved to include data that was previously missing.
Most notably, the tenth release of the data is devoted to the integration of new images of the southern extragalactic sky obtained with DECam.
In addition, the new release includes images of the sky taken with an additional color filter.
NOIRLab will host this data in the Astro Data Archive, from original telescope images to catalogs that report the positions and other properties of stars and galaxies. The data will be public.
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