What will be the DESI DR2 footprint?

Question

Hello again,

I'm designing an MSc student project for Jan 2026 - Dec 2027, which will involve reducing and proposing optical spectroscopy for the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). To avoid the possibility of their hard work being made redundant by the next data release of DESI spectra, please could you let us know the footprint (e.g. RA and Dec range) that DR2 is expected to cover? We can then avoid this region, and note it in the project plan (due next month).

Kind regards,

Sarah

Answer 1

Hello Sarah,

Thank you for contacting us, but please note that the Data Lab team is not responsible for preparing future DESI data releases. For questions like this, I would encourage you to contact the DESI data team directly using https://help.desi.lbl.gov.

That said, the footprint information may or may not be available, since that information is part of the data release, not necessarily available in advance. I can try to find this information, but if it is not available, then it won't be available until DR2 is actually released.

Kia ora koe,

Benjamin Alan Weaver

Comments

In figure 1 of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.14739, you can see a rough footprint for DR2. The DESI team is also willing in principle to share the RA, Dec of *individual objects* that will be released in DR2, although this would be a list of points, not a geometric description of the footprint. I don't know how quickly such a list could be assembled, however.

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Many thanks for your replies, Benjamin! OK, I have a list of sources already, so could ask the team (via the other Q&A website you mentioned) if they're able to do a crossmatch check.

Thanks,
Sarah