The Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Understand

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) completed its five-month Survey Validation in May 2021.

• Spectra of stellar and extragalactic targets from Survey Validation constitute the first major data sample from the DESI survey.
• This paper describes the public release of those spectra, the catalogs of derived properties, and the intermediate data products.
• In total, the public release includes good-quality spectral information from 466,447 objects targeted as part of the Milky Way Survey, 428,758 as part of the Bright Galaxy Survey, 227,318 as part of the Luminous Red Galaxy sample, 437,664 as part of the Emission Line Galaxy sample, and 76,079 as part of the Quasar sample.