A 3-D sky-mapping project that will measure the light of millions of galaxies has received formal approval from the U.S. Department of Energy to move forward with construction. Installation of the project, called DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument), is set to begin next year at the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, with observations starting up in January 2019.

Read the rest of this story at Berkeley Lab’s News Center. 

Learn more about the Heising-Simons Foundation’s support for DESI here. 

This short video is a simulation of simultaneously reconfiguring 499 fiber positioner prototype robots on the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). The video is real time. The instrument will contain 5000 identical robots, each automatically targeting an individual galaxy.