Moore Foundation grantees at UC Berkeley have received a critical approval from the U.S. Department of Energy. This approval authorizes funding, schedule and scientific scope for DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument which will ultimately give us a picture of the way that dark energy and gravity have contributed to the shape of the universe. The collaboration is made up of two hundred physicists and astronomers around the world and the project is based at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
DESI will be situated in the already existing Mayall telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona, which was completed in the early 1970s. The Moore Foundation contributed funding towards the six glass lenses that will focus light onto a focal plane that is made up of optical fibers that can be repositioned using 5,000 robotic arms.
Read the full press release here, and read more about the Mayall telescope’s makeover here.
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