September 18, 2012, by Lindsay Brooke

World’s most powerful camera records first images in hunt for Dark Energy

The world’s most powerful digital camera has captured the very first pictures of galaxies eight billion light years away in the hunt for Dark Energy. The starlight it has captured may hold within it the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham are part of the Dark Energy Survey, an international collaboration involving 23 institutions, which will use these images to probe why the expansion of our universe is speeding up and what part Dark Energy plays in this.

The Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, is the first device specifically designed to search for dark energy. It is able to see light from over 100,000 galaxies up to eight billion light years away in each snapshot.  To see the first image captured by the Dark Energy Camera, please visit: http://www.noao.edu/news/2012/pr1204.php or www.ctio.noao.edu.

A team of three scientists in the School of Physics and Astronomy are taking leading roles in the survey – for more about the University’s involvement go to: http://tiny.cc/DarkEnergy

 

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