Pith. sign in

REVIEW 3 cited by

The Backup Program of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's Milky Way Survey

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2505.17230 v1 pith:AGDLPSN6 submitted 2025-05-22 astro-ph.SR astro-ph.GAastro-ph.IM

The Backup Program of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's Milky Way Survey

classification astro-ph.SR astro-ph.GAastro-ph.IM
keywords desisurveystarsgaiamainmilkymillionmwbp
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
Share X Bluesky LinkedIn Reddit HN
read the original abstract

The Milky Way Backup Program (MWBP), a survey currently underway with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-m Telescope, works at the margins of the DESI Main surveys to obtain spectra of millions of additional stars from the Gaia catalog. Efficiently utilizing twilight times (<18 deg) and poor weather conditions, the MWBP extends the range of stellar sources studied to both brighter magnitudes and lower Galactic latitude and declination than the stars studied in DESI's Main Milky Way Survey. While the MWBP prioritizes candidate giant stars selected from the Gaia catalog (using color and parallax criteria), it also includes an unbiased sample of bright stars (i.e., 11.2 < G < 16 mag) as well as fainter sources (to G < 19 mag). As of March 1, 2025, the survey had obtained spectra of ~7 million stars, approximately 1.2 million of which are included in the DESI Data Release 1. The full survey, when completed, will cover an area of more than 21,000 square degrees and include approximately 10 million Gaia sources, roughly equal to the number of stellar spectra obtained through the DESI Main Survey, while only utilizing <9% of all DESI observing time.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Constraining the Galactic bar using the M92 stellar stream

    astro-ph.GA 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Spectroscopic members of the M92 stream yield a Milky Way bar pattern speed of 29.1 +0.7/-0.4 km s^{-1} kpc^{-1}.

  2. Characterizing the GD-1 Stream with DESI DR2 Data: Thin Stream and Hot Cocoon

    astro-ph.GA 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    DESI data on the GD-1 stream identifies a thin cold core and a hot cocoon with 30% of members whose dispersion is consistent with 11 Gyr of dark matter subhalo heating.

  3. Disentangling the Distant Stellar Halo Using K-Giants in the DESI Year 3 Data

    astro-ph.GA 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    DESI K-giant catalog identifies Aleph, Sagittarius, GSE, Cetus-Palca and Orphan-Chenab, then shows residual halo high-angular-momentum stars have bimodal MDFs unlike GSE or Sagittarius.