On July 11, Bertin Winlight (a Business Unit of Bertin Technologies) had the opportunity to participate in the celebration of the first results from the DESI spectrograph, installed on the Mayall Telescope in the United States. As part of this project, Bertin manufactured, integrated, and tested 10 spectrographs in collaboration with the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Marseille (LAM) and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
Last spring, the international collaboration DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) released the first results of this instrument designed to analyze dark energy, which is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Located at the Kitt Peak Observatory in the United States, this scientific instrument enables spectroscopic astronomical surveys of distant galaxies.
During a week, the international cosmological community gathered in Marseille, France, to review its initial results. Micheal Levi, the project director, was present.
DESI has created a mapping of galaxies and quasars with unprecedented precision, resulting in the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever made, while also measuring the rate of the universe’s expansion over the past 11 billion years.
For the first time, researchers have tracked the history of this expansion over such an extended period with an accuracy of under 1%, offering a crucial tool for investigating the nature of dark energy.
In just one year of data collection, DESI has surpassed all previous 3D maps, which were the result of 20 years of observations. It has strengthened the foundations of our best cosmological model while paving the way for promising new insights with additional data.
