The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a newly installed spectrograph at Kitt Peak National Observatory’s 4-meter Mayall telescope. DESI is capable of obtaining five thousand star and galaxy spectra simultaneously, and over the next five years will create the largest ever three-dimensional of the Universe. This talk will explain the scientific motivation for DESI, highlight some of our ambitious efforts that have made DESI possible, and describe how DESI is capable of mapping the Universe ten times better than ever before.

About the speaker: Aaron Meisner

Aaron Meisner is an astronomer at NSF’s NOIRLab affiliated with Arizona’s Kitt Peak National Observatory. For over five years, Aaron has been a core member of the DESI instrument commissioning and target selection imaging survey teams. Aaron specializes in building astronomical maps using large data sets at visible and infrared wavelengths. Aaron received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Stanford University and earned his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. Before joining NOIRLab’s scientific staff, he was a NASA Hubble Fellow at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.