The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), an astronomical instrument developed by scientists and engineers at Berkeley National Laboratory, is an extremely complex machine that uses 5,000 tiny robots to control the direction of the “gaze” of a fiber-optic lens. Each of these lenses is designed to study one individual galaxy, so the DESI instrument will be capable of observing 5,000 galaxies simultaneously, taking 20 minutes per observing cycle.
The circumference of the DESI instrument is divided into 10 sectors of 36 angular degrees. On each of these petals installed 500 robots, and the total number of parts that make up the tool DESI as a whole, more than 600 thousand. Once this highly complex mechanism is completed, the DESI instrument will be installed on the Mayall Telescope, part of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, in 2019.
The main scientific challenge the DESI instrument will address is measuring the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe. For this purpose, spectral data from tens of millions of quasars and galaxies will be collected using the instrument. And on the basis of these data a detailed three-dimensional map will be compiled, covering the universe around us to a depth of 11 billion light years.
