The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released a 5.6-trillion-pixel color 2D map of the universe, Berkeley Lab reported on Aug. 10, 2026. The map covers roughly 75 percent of the sky in visible and near-infrared light and contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies.
More than 160 scientists contributed to collecting data for the project, while a team of 20 produced the final dataset. The map combines 263,407 telescope exposures taken over 2,285 nights across three sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. Data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite mission and additional public sources supplemented the ground observations.
Supercomputing and DESI Operations
Developing the computer code to merge the images required about a year, followed by eight weeks of processing on the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The resulting dataset is publicly accessible through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer and provides a view of the extragalactic universe unblocked by dust from the Milky Way. More than 1,800 scientific papers have already referenced earlier iterations of the survey data.
The 2D map originally served to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, which measures celestial objects at different light wavelengths to build a 3D map and track dark energy over time. DESI completed its original five-year survey in April 2026 ahead of schedule. Researchers have used the updated 2D map to select DESI targets since June 2026, and DESI plans to publish improved results from its first five years in 2027 while continuing observations into 2028.
Future Observatories and Computing
Astronomers can pair the dataset with their own observations to study dark matter, observe supernovae, and search for gravitational lenses. The Legacy Surveys data will also act as a baseline comparison for upcoming facilities, including the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Additionally, researchers will use the data to train artificial intelligence models as part of an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud under the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.
