Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe

The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined 263,407 exposures from DECaLS, MzLS, BASS, and NASA’s WISE to produce a 5.6-trillion-pixel 2-D map covering about 75% of the sky, cataloguing nearly four billion stars and galaxies. The publicly accessible map underpins the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s 3-D survey, enabling searches for gravitational lenses, supernovae, and investigations of dark matter and dark energy.