Dark Energy Survey

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DECam takes millionth exposure

    From NSF’s NOIRLab, June 8, 2021: The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) built and tested by Fermilab, one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world, has taken its one-millionth exposure. DECam’s million exposures include science observations as well as test and calibration exposures taken by the camera while it was being fine-tuned after its construction and installation on the Blanco telescope in 2012.

    A starry night sky with purple diagonal stripe from lower left to upper right corner above an observatory lit up in bright red. A shadow of a building or facility is in the lower right corner.

    Dark Energy Survey releases most precise look at the universe’s evolution

    The Dark Energy Survey collaboration has created the largest ever maps of the distribution and shapes of galaxies, tracing both ordinary and dark matter in the universe out to a distance of over 7 billion light years. The analysis, which includes the first three years of data from the survey, is consistent with predictions from the current best model of the universe, the standard cosmological model. Nevertheless, there remain hints from DES and other experiments that matter in the current universe is a few percent less clumpy than predicted.

    A Univeristy of Chicago astronomer’s decades-long quest to map millions of stars

      From the University of Chicago, May 21, 2021: Long-time University of Chicago professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Richard Kron created the Sloan Digital Sky Survey which set the stage for the Dark Energy Survey. Although he is retiring this year after 40 years of mapping the universe, he plans on staying on as director of the Dark Energy Survey.

      Fermilab scientist Juan Estrada stands in front of the Oscura test vessel for the operation of CCDs in liquid nitrogen. OSCURA, people, dark matter Photo: Andrew Lathrop

      Fermilab scientist Juan Estrada wins American Physical Society Instrumentation Award

      A physicist making great advances in particle detector technology, Estrada is recognized by the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields for his creation and development of novel applications for CCD technology that probe wide-ranging areas of particle physics, including cosmology, dark matter searches, neutrino detection and quantum imaging.

      Four decades and millions of stars later, Sloan Digital Sky Survey co-founder retires

        From The University of Chicago Physical Sciences, Feb. 8, 2021: Fermilab scientist Richard Kron is retiring from the University of Chicago. He co-founded the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which created the most detailed 3-D maps of the universe and recorded the spectra for more than 3 million astronomical objects. His approach influenced the Dark Energy Survey, which created one of the most accurate dark matter maps of the universe and which Kron will continue to direct.

        The spiral of the Southern Pinwheel

          From NOIRLab, Feb. 8, 2021: The Dark Energy Camera, originally used to complete the Dark Energy Survey, has taken the most detailed photo of Messier 83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel galaxy. (In DECam’s second act, scientists can apply for time to use it to collect data that is then made publicly available.) In all, 163 DECam exposures went into creating this image.

          By measuring light from individual stars between galaxy clusters, astronomers find clues about dark matter

            From Universe Today, Feb. 3, 2021: Recent published results from the Dark Energy Survey point to intracluster light — feeble light from rogue stars that don’t belong to a galaxy — as a potential pathway to measure dark matter. Fermilab scientist Yuanyuan Zhang contextualizes the findings.

            Astronomers explore ‘cosmic balance’ to weigh clusters of galaxies

              From Super Interessante, Jan. 31, 2021: A team of researchers from Fermilab and the National Observatory in Brazil used the light of solitary stars to calculate the mass of some of the largest structures in the cosmos — galaxy clusters. In addition to taking the most detailed measurement ever published of intracluster light, the team’s new method of measurement can help further investigate dark matter.