The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
By Miryam Naddaf & Davide Castelvecchi
06 May 2026
New map of the Universe. On the night of 14 April, a cosmology project completed its initial five-year mission to create the most detailed 3D map of the Universe so far. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI), based at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, has measured the precise distances of 47 million galaxies and quasars. Pictured is a thin slice of the map, with the Milky Way at its centre; the inset shows how galaxies form a web of clusters and filaments under the pull of gravity. DESI’s preliminary results hinted that the leading model of cosmic expansion could be wrong.
Claire Lamman/DESI collaboration
