Five thousand eyes on the sky

A cutting-edge new telescope instrument designed and built by an international team including Durham University has taken its first observations of the night sky. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has 5,000 fibre-optic eyes designed to give scientists a unique view of our rapidly growing universe. The expansion of the universe is speeding up, although scientists are yet to discover why. Dark energy Dark energy is one agent thought to be contributing to this expansion and DESI will seek to measure its properties. The telescope instrument's fibre-optic system, led by Durham, will split light from objects in space like galaxies, quasars and stars into narrow bands of colour to map their distance from Earth. By looking at how far and how quickly galaxies and quasars are moving away from our planet, researchers will be able to gauge how much and how fast the universe has expanded. DESI is an instrument of the Mayall Telescope in Arizona, USA, and brings together 500 scientists at 75 institutions across 13 countries.