Light on Dark energy

Dark Energy Camera was activated 12 Sept 2012
Image NOAO

BBC Science & Environment has another excellent - but this time anonymous - article informing the public about CTIO Dark Energy Survey. It has now activated it's very very very high resolution digital camera to allow careful examination of light reaching Earth from distant galaxy clusters.

The Dark Energy Survey's 570-million-pixel camera will scan some 300 million galaxies in the coming five years.

The goal is to discover the nature of dark energy, which is theorised to be responsible for the ever-faster expansion of the Universe.

Its first image, taken 12 September, focussed on the Fornax galaxy cluster.

This enormous survey is a collaboration between US, UK, Brazilian, Spanish and German astronomers.

The phone box-sized Dark Energy Camera or DECam is mounted on the 4m Victor M Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile's Atacama desert.
Read the entire article in BBC website Sept 19 2012

Another Space Theology bookmark BBC Science - Dark energy camera