I wish you all the best as we start the new year. A few highlights from DES 2015 (a very incomplete list): the collaboration has submitted over 60 papers for publication; produced the largest contiguous mass map of the Universe; discovered nearly a score of Milky Way dwarf satellites and other Milky Way structures; measured weak lensing cosmic shear, galaxy clustering, and cross-correlations with CMB lensing and with X-ray and SZ-detected clusters; continued to measure light curves for large numbers of type Ia supernovae and discovered a number of super-luminous supernovae including the highest-redshift SLSN so far; discovered a number of redshift z>6 QSOs; discovered a number of strongly lensed galaxies and QSOs; and discovered a number of interesting objects in the outer Solar System. Much of this work involved the Science Verification data, less than 3% of the eventual DES data set.
As I’ve noted in the past, this progress is the direct result of all those who have worked in dedicated fashion for many years on the project—the instrument hardware and software, telescope, data management and testing, calibration, observing teams, simulations, survey planning, science planning and analysis, etc. Keep up the great work!
Best,
Josh
