Ground Instrumentation
DES
Instrument mapping millions of galaxies to study the nature of dark energy
DES (Dark Energy Survey) is an international project designed to map more than 300 million galaxies, detect thousands of supernovae, and find patterns of cosmic structure that reveal the nature of the mysterious dark energy that drives the Universe.
To do this, the project has built a DECam camera—an extremely sensitive 570 megapixel digital camera—capable of measuring light from galaxies at distances of up to 9 billion light years, which is mounted on the 4-metre Blanc telescope at the Cerro Tolo Inter-American Astronomical Observatory in Chile. The DES consortium consists of more than 400 scientists from 25 countries.
The observations, which began in September 2013 and will continue for the next few years, are providing a mapping of the southern sky in unprecedented detail. Analysis of these data will help scientists understand the role of dark energy and dark matter in the formation of galaxies.
THE IEEC CONTRIBUTION
The IEEC is a founding partner of the project and has participated in its management. It has also contributed to the construction of the DECam camera, both in terms of the electronics and the guidance system. The IEEC researchers involved in DES have been in charge of distributing the data obtained with the instrument, coordinating its scientific analysis, and carrying out computational simulations to reproduce the history of the Universe, from long before stars were formed to the present day.