September 18, 2012

NOAO: World’s most powerful digital camera opens eye, records first images in hunt for dark energy




Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time.

That light may hold within it the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics – why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

read entire press release >>

To see the first images captured by the Dark Energy Camera, go here >>