Perched atop a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes, the Dark Energy Camera has captured more than a million images of the southern sky.
The 2.5 billion objects captured in the snapshot include galaxies, asteroids, stars, comets and massive supernovae.
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This is key to completing the Dark Energy Survey (DES), an international collaboration aimed at mapping objects in the Milky Way.
Since its launch in 2013, the project has imaged one-eighth of the sky, capturing light from galaxies 8 billion light-years away.
The ultimate goal is to find patterns that reveal the nature of a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy.
This is the theoretical driving force behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
While its supposed existence underlies much of our understanding of the universe, scientists have yet to definitively prove its existence.
The Dark Energy Camera, part of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, photographed the first stars 10 years ago.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — where the camera was built — will celebrate the anniversary this week.
On Tuesday, the Particle Physics Laboratory highlighted 15 spectacular images of the device.
They include luminous galaxies, near-Earth comets, and swaths of the Milky Way’s center.
As a key component of dark energy investigations, cameras are used to image and analyze other objects in the sky.
It is capable of capturing light from galaxies up to 8 billion light-years away, allowing it to “peek” in time.
The light reaching the instrument from these galaxies is — you guessed it — 8 billion years old.
Scientists can use these readings to peer into the galaxy’s past, examining planets and stars that predate Earth.
“The Dark Energy Survey, whose scientists are now analyzing data collected from 2013 to 2019, is not the only experiment benefiting from powerful equipment,” writes Fermilab’s Lauren Biron.
“Other research groups have used the camera to conduct additional astronomical observations and surveys.”
The images came as astronomers identified a nearby galaxy as the origin point of the mysterious space signal.
The recently discovered spatial signal has been classified as a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) and named “FRB 20200120E,” according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
Meanwhile, NASA has released some stunning images from its Chandra X-ray Observatory space telescope.
These images provide rare glimpses into our universe, as well as space objects that we cannot technically see with the naked eye.
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