Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 27 items across 5 sources · 6h ago. Quotes are verbatim.

The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe on August 10, 2026, containing 5.6 trillion pixels and nearly 4 billion celestial objects. Built from 263,407 telescope exposures across three ground-based surveys and supplemented by NASA satellite data, the map covers roughly 75% of the sky and is publicly available for research. The release follows April 2026 results from DESI that hinted dark energy's impact may be weakening over time, a potential paradigm shift in understanding the universe's fate.

• The largest-ever 2D map of the universe contains 5.6 trillion pixels and nearly 4 billion celestial objects, built from over 260,000 telescope exposures across multiple surveys.
• The publicly available map covers 75% of the sky and has already informed over 1,800 published science papers, establishing itself as foundational to modern astronomy research.
• Early results from the DESI survey hint that dark energy's impact may be weakening over time—a potential paradigm shift in understanding the universe's expansion and ultimate fate.
• The project represents 13 years of work by 160+ scientists and combines data from ground-based observatories and NASA satellites to enable research on dark matter, dark energy, and other cosmic phenomena.