DESI commissioning has raced forward this winter, and we have now
demonstrated the key performance parameters of the instrument!
Since installation of the instrument, refinement of the performance of the 8 square
degree corrector, high-precision (10 micron) positioning of the
fibers under active feedback, accurate calibration of the spectrographs,
and on-sky commissioning of the whole user interface have been demonstrated.
All of this progress culminated in successful demonstration in March
of spectroscopy with the full DESI system of many tens of thousands
of survey targets. The image below is of a luminous red galaxy targets, easily revealing the distinctive Balmer-line signature of a post-starburst galaxy at redshift 1.286! See our blog for more details!
