Jun 12, 2023
To study dark energy, the large Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will map over 40 million galaxies. Today, DESI has released its first data and is publishing 15 papers on the scientific study of these data.
The Universe is immensely big, and getting bigger all the time. To study dark energy, the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of our Universe, scientists are using the large Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey to map over 40 million galaxies, quasars and stars. Today, the collaboration has released its first batch of data, with nearly 2 million astrophysical objects for researchers to study.
Jan 13, 2021
Nearly 200 researchers were involved in collecting, processing and assembling images of half the sky to prepare for the start of observations by DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which aims to solve the mystery of dark energy.
In order for DESI to begin its 5-year mission (2021-2026) to produce the largest 3D sky map ever made, researchers first needed a gigantic 2D map of the Universe.
Jul 20, 2020
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) published in July a complete analysis of the largest three-dimensional map of the Universe ever created, reconstructing the history of its expansion over a period of 11 billion years.
Jul 08, 2020
Scientists from the large cosmological survey SDSS/eBOSS have constructed the first so-called "tomographic" map of the far Universe on a very large scale, which until now only existed in one dimension, along the line of sight of the ground-based telescope. To do this, they used the latest Lyman-alpha forest data, which indirectly plot the density of matter in the direction of bright objects, the quasars. The resulting map covers a cube of 3.26 billion light-years from observations of nearly 10,000 quasars.
Dec 20, 2019
A team from IRFU's Department of Particle Physics (DPhP) has just conducted the most accurate study to date of the mass of cosmic neutrinos, including both standard model neutrinos and sterile neutrinos contributing to dark matter.
The researchers used the spectra of nearly 200,000 distant quasars measured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) eBOSS project to map the distribution of hydrogen at very remote times in the history of our universe, ten to twelve billion years ago.
Oct 28, 2019
‘First light’ for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI): as the installation phase nears completion, this new instrument is due to undergo final tests before starting to create a giant map of the sky in early 2020, a mission that is scheduled to run for five years.
Jul 12, 2019
The installation of DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, has just passed an important milestone: with 6 operational spectrographs on site, the minimum configuration required to meet the scientific objectives of the project has been reached. At the end, DESI will have 10 spectrographs and will commit itself from 2020 to the spectroscopic survey of 35 million galaxies and quasars, to study the dark component of the Universe.
Apr 11, 2019
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is intended to make the spectroscopic survey of 35 million galaxies and quasars from 2020 onwards, to study precisely the properties of dark energy. Its installation, started in 2018, has recently entered a new phase with the reception and assembly of the first two spectrographs out of the 10 that the instrument will include.
Feb 25, 2019
Neutrinos from the Big Bang have been traveling the Universe for more than 13 billion years. They are almost undetectable but their footprint on the formation of large structures in the Universe, such as galaxies, can be detected. For the first time, this trace of the "diffuse neutrino background" from the Big Bang on the "baryonic acoustic oscillations" (BAO) has been deduced from the survey of 1.2 million galaxies of the "Sloan Digital Sky Survey" (SDSS).
Feb 27, 2018
More than twenty years after the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, the nature of the physical phenomenon at the origin of this acceleration, called "dark energy", is still unknown. The current model of cosmology is based on general relativity as a theory of gravitation and establishes a theoretical prediction for the quantity of galaxies that form at a given period of the Universe. This cosmological parameter is called the growth rate of cosmic structures.
Jul 10, 2017
Several decades after its discovery, dark matter remains enigmatic. Researchers from IRFU have tested three models of dark matter in which the formation of large structures was modeled using supercomputing. The reconstruction of large structures from observations of quasar spectra favors the hypothesis of a standard "cold" dark matter and sets some of the strongest constraints on these invisible masses.
Jun 13, 2017
An international team from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has carried out the first large-scale spectroscopic analysis of quasars, and was able to create a full 3D map of the universe and its large structures as it was 6 billion years ago. For now, the standard model of Cosmology, based upon Einstein's general theory of relativity, is confirmed.
Jan 30, 2017
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (Desi) will analyze the light emitted by 35 million galaxies and quasars at various times in the past of the Universe and up to 11 billion years to better understand dark energy. Its move into the construction phase in 2016 crowns several years of research and development that have resulted in a solid design and a credible observation strategy. Irfu, a partner in the project from the outset, has played a key role. A look back at a year that saw the project become a reality.
Apr 08, 2014
Astronomers at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) used 140,000 distant quasars to measure the rate of expansion of the Universe when it was only a quarter of its present age. This is the best measure of the rate of expansion at any time in the 13 billion years since the Big Bang. Researchers from Irfu (CEA) and CNRS played a major role in this discovery.
Nov 27, 2012
Astrophysicists from the SDSS-III (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) project, composed largely of French researchers, CEA Irfu, CNRS In2p3 and INSU, have made the first measurement of the rate of expansion of the young Universe, only three billion years old out of the 13.7 billion, when gravity was still slowing down its expansion, before its current phase of expansion accelerated by the Dark Energy. They used a new technique to map the distant Universe in three dimensions. This result is online at arXiv.org.
Jun 23, 2011
To retrace the history of the Universe, physicists need to make images of it at its different ages, going back tens of billions of years.
Scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), including a group from Irfu and CNRS (IN2P3 and INSU), have produced the largest map of the distant Universe from the BOSS (Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey) survey. This three-dimensional map shows the position in space and time of intergalactic hydrogen gas clouds.
Jan 12, 2011
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, a collaboration with contributions from researchers at the CNRS and CEA, has just released the widest sky survey ever carried out to the international scientific community at the annual meeting of the American Astronomy Society held in Seattle between January 10 and 13, 2011.
Oct 10, 2009
The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey - known as Boss - delivered its first data during the night of 14-15 September. This experiment, devoted to the search for baryon oscillations, heralds the start of a new era of research into dark energy and the evolution of the Universe. Several teams are involved in BOSS, in particular from IN2P3(1)/CNRS, INSU(2)/CNRS and CEA.
