The optical lenses for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument have seen their first light. Fermilab contributed key components to DESI, including the corrector barrel and its support structures, along with vital software that ensures the instrument’s 5,000 robotic positioners are precisely aligned with their celestial targets.
From This Week in Science, Feb. 20, 2019:
This podcast features Antonella Palmese, a postdoctoral research associate at Fermilab and a member of the Dark Energy Survey, which recently completed its six-year observation of a section of the southern sky.
From 365 Days of Astronomy, Feb. 9, 2019: In this podcast, The Dark Energy Survey started in 2013 to map dark energy over 5000 square degrees of sky. Writer and poet Amy Catanzano visited Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory during the Dark Energy Survey. In this podcast, Amy discusses her work in quantum poetics, her experience with the Dark Energy Survey and shares some of her poetry.
From Scientific American, Jan. 30, 2019: Fermilab scientist Antonella Palmonese weighs in on a new method of determining the Hubble constant. The method uses data taken from the Fermilab-hosted Dark Energy Survey.
From Nature Reviews Physics, Jan. 28, 2019: The Dark Energy Survey completed its six-year-mission to map more than 300 million distant galaxies; however, an equally arduous task — analyzing the acquired 50 terabytes of data with a view to understanding the expansion of the universe — is just beginning.
From APS’s Physics, Jan. 29, 2019: On Jan. 9, a handful of researchers with the Dark Energy Survey — one of the most ambitious attempts to probe the dynamics of the universe’s expansion — headed to the control room of Chile’s Blanco Telescope. For one last time, they opened the white telescope’s dome. From their perch overlooking the red Andean Mountains, they set up for a night of observing the southern sky.
From WDCB’s First Light, Jan. 20, 2019: This WDCB interview features Fermilab scientists Brenna Flaugher and Tom Diehl talking about the final nights of the Dark Energy Survey.
This Chilean mountaintop is the home of the Dark Energy Camera. See a 5-minute video, created by the photographer, of time-lapse clips from the Blanco telescope. Photo: Marty Murphy
From Sinc, Jan. 15, 2019: Tras seis años captando millones de galaxias con una cámara del telescopio Blanco, la colaboración científica Dark Energy Survey ha completado el cartografiado de un octavo del cielo con un detalle sin precedentes. Los resultados ya han servido para publicar más de 200 artículos científicos, pero se esperan muchos más, con el objetivo puesto en descubrir la naturaleza de la misteriosa energía oscura.
From 365 Days of Astronomy, Jan. 12, 2019: The Dark Energy Survey is the subject of this 30-minute podcast. DES started in 2013 to map dark energy over 5000 square degrees of sky. It used a massive 500-megapixel camera attached to the Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The survey concluded on Jan. 9, 2019, with its last night of observing. At the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, they conferenced with observers on the last night. Listen to the conversation at the end of this journey.