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First Images in a New Hunt for Dark Energy
Zoomed-in image from the Dark Energy Camera of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, about 60 million light-years from Earth. (Dark Energy Survey Collaboration)
The ongoing search for dark energy now has a new set of eyes: the Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco telescope at the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The culmination of eight years of planning and engineering, the phone-booth-sized 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera has now gathered its very first images, capturing light from cosmic structures tens of millions of light-years away.
Eventually the program’s survey will help astronomers uncover the secrets of dark energy — the enigmatic force suspected to be behind the ongoing and curiously accelerating expansion of the Universe.
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Read the rest of First Images in a New Hunt for Dark Energy (310 words)
© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments |
Post tags: Blanco Telescope, chile, CTIO, Dark Energy, dark energy camera, Dark Energy Survey, first light, galaxy, NOAO, NSF, telescope
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2012-09-18 02:32:00
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/97413/first-images-in-a-new-hunt-for-dark-energy/
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