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We have a new DES scientist of the week! Though DES can see billions of light-years away, he's fascinated by questi… https://t.co/muH5YGsrI6

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Apparently there's basketball today? If the Earth were the size of a basketball and placed in the hoop, the Moon w… https://t.co/milbaRHvXl

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A beautiful blue spiral. The green splotch is due to a background subtraction error. #DESImages (Credit: Erin Sheld… https://t.co/QHmTm2T162

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The Dark Energy Survey

4 days ago

We have a new DES scientist of the week! Though DES can see billions of light-years away, he's fascinated by questions a bit closer to home.

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Pedro Bernardinelli - The Dark Energy Survey

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Pedro Bernardinelli is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. He works on solar system science inside DES including … Read more »

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The Dark Energy Survey

5 days ago

Apparently there's basketball today? If the Earth were the size of a basketball and placed in the hoop, the Moon would be roughly at the three-point line. The Sun would be 100 court lengths away! #DarkBites

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The Dark Energy Survey

7 days ago

A beautiful blue spiral. The green splotch is due to a background subtraction error.
#DESImages (Credit: Erin Sheldon) ... See MoreSee Less

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The Dark Energy Survey

2 weeks ago

We have a new scientist of the week! She comes from a very small country, but now leads DES analysis teams trying to piece together how the whole Universe works.

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Alexandra Amon - The Dark Energy Survey

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Alexandra Amon is a postdoc at the Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University and the SLAC … Read more »

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The Dark Energy Survey

2 weeks ago

The universe is only 5% normal (baryonic) matter while 95% is dark matter and dark energy. For perspective, that's the same proportion as a 160lbs person to the weight of a standard 4-door car. #DarkBites

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Beyond the Dark Energy Survey – Illinois astronomers look to the future after mapping the skies

February 12, 2019 12:00 am

For the past six years, the Department of Astronomy and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois have been closely involved with one of the most sensitive and comprehensive surveys of distant galaxies ever performed. Now that the survey is complete, they will analyze the vast amounts of data that’s been collected to better understand our universe. In January, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) stopped collecting data after scanning a quarter of the southern skies and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies. Now, astronomers anticipate that they will continue to refine this data for use by scientists into 2021. “DES is leading the way for data science intensive research at Illinois,” said Leslie Looney, chair of the Department of Astronomy. “This is really the beginning of a new revolution in astronomy— using a large amount of data to do fundamental astronomical science. We are developing new techniques that better utilize state-of-the-art computer science methods to analyze galaxies, stars, and many other types of objects.”

The Poetry Of the Dark Energy Survey

February 9, 2019 12:00 am

Listen here: https://player.fm/series/the-365-days-of-astronomy-the-daily-podcast-of-the-international-year-of-astronomy-2009-49427/noao-the-poetry-of-the-dark-energy-survey 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. Bio: Rob Sparks is a Science Education Specialist at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. A lifelong astronomy enthusiast, he earned a B.A. in physics at Grinnell College and his M.S. at Michigan State University. He taught high school physics, math and astronomy for 11 years at schools on St. Croix, Florida and Wisconsin. He spent the 2001-2002 school year working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as a recipient of the Fermilab Teacher Fellowship. He spent the summer of 2003 at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory as part of the Research Experience for Teachers. He has been working as a NASA Astrophysics Ambassador since 2002. He was a member of the Galileoscope Working Group for the International Year of Astronomy. Amy Catanzano is a writer and poet who teaches at Wake Forest University. She works extensively on poetry involving different scientific disciplines and has published three books of poetry

Dark Energy May Be Incompatible With String Theory

August 9, 2018 12:00 am

Since 1998, telescope observations have indicated that the cosmos is expanding ever-so-slightly faster all the time, implying that the vacuum of empty space must be infused with a dose of gravitationally repulsive “dark energy.” In addition, it looks like the amount of dark energy infused in empty space stays constant over time (as best anyone can tell). But the new conjecture asserts that the vacuum energy of the universe must be decreasing. Paul Steinhardt, a cosmologist at Princeton University and one of Vafa’s co-authors, said that over the next few years, “all eyes should be on” measurements by the Dark Energy Survey, WFIRST and Euclid telescopes of whether the density of dark energy is changing. “If you find it’s not consistent with quintessence,” Steinhardt said, “it means either the swampland idea is wrong, or string theory is wrong, or both are wrong or — something’s wrong.”

The dark-energy deniers

June 19, 2018 12:00 am

Make no mistake, dark energy – be it the cosmological constant or quintessence – is the leading theory with plenty of observational evidence to support it. The alternatives remain highly controversial. Yet those nagging questions just won’t go away. Upcoming surveys will either solidify dark energy theory’s position further, or produce a surprise by pulling the rug out from under it. With the Dark Energy Survey – an international collaboration using a 570-million-pixel camera called DECam on the Blanco 4 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile – releasing its first data from a survey of 300 million galaxies, these are exciting times. “What makes this a really fun field to be in is that I don’t know what the next big step will be,” concludes Riess. “We’re just in the middle of our initial reconnaissance, and I don’t think we should be surprised by surprises.”

Simon Samuroff receives URA Thesis Award for Dark Energy Survey image analysis

June 1, 2018 12:00 am

The Dark Energy Survey captures images of galaxies billions of light-years away to help our understanding of the evolution of the cosmos. Assessing these galaxies’ properties, such as their size, shape and distance from each other, is a painstaking process, one that involves not only collecting massive amounts of data, but also correcting for potential miscues that challenge the very act of assessing the data. The Fermilab-led Dark Energy Survey aims to make unprecedented measurements of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Gravity bends light produced by faraway galaxies, so images of galaxies are subtly distorted by the time they reach Earth. The degree of distortion itself can provide information about those galaxies, galaxy clusters and the universe around them. An important step in making accurate measurements of the universe is by successfully isolating these tiny distortions. Simon Samuroff is the recipient of the 2017 URA Thesis Award, presented annually for outstanding work by a graduate student working at or in collaboration with Fermilab. In his thesis, titled “Systematic Biases in Weak Lensing Cosmology with the Dark Energy Survey,” Samuroff built computer simulations to model the shapes of galaxies captured by the Dark Energy Camera, which was built by Fermilab and is located at an observatory on a Chilean mountaintop. He closely compared thousands of the simulations to actual images to determine the amount by which scientists’ initial estimates of these distortions are incorrect. He singled out miscues so the Dark Energy Camera could make improved measurements and be more sensitive to subtle effects of phenomena such as dark matter. “The committee was impressed by both the quality of writing and the magnitude of his study — cataloging millions of galaxies or clusters and taking very small effects into account,” said Fermilab scientist Lenny Spiegel, chair of the URA Thesis Award Committee. “His work is invaluable to scientists studying mysteries regarding astrophysics, which may ultimately point the direction for future progress in particle physics.” One of Samuroff’s major results showed that interactions between the images of neighboring galaxies that overlapped affected scientists’ measurements more severely than they realized. By identifying where and to what degree distortions like this cause inaccuracies, Samuroff helps scientists create a more reliable system of measurement.

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