The discovery that the universe is accelerating from the mass it contains defines one of the 21st-century cosmology research agendas. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a next-generation sky survey aimed at understanding dark energy, and the reasons why the universe is accelerating. Researchers are building a red-sensitive 500-Megapixel camera, a 1-meter diameter, 2.2-degree field-of-view prime focus corrector, and a data-acquisition system fast enough to take images in 17 seconds. The system will mount on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, a NOAO telescope, and be operational 2012.
Funding for DES is provided by the US Department of Energy, the US National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, NCSA/UIUC, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, and DES collaborating institutions.
URL:
www.darkenergysurvey.org
www.isgtw.org/?pid=1001261
Collaborators:
USA:
Fermilab; NCSA/UIUC; University of Chicago; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO); University of Michigan; University of Pennsylvania; Argonne National Laboratory; Ohio State University
Spain:
Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio; Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies; Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas
UK:
University College London; University of Cambridge; University of Edinburgh; University of Portsmouth; University of Sussex
Brazil:
Observatorio Nacional; Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas; Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
