Powerful cosmic camera snaps at the stars

The Dark Energy Camera, the world’s most powerful digital camera, has produced its first images.
 
It took eight years for scientists and astronomers to design and build the device, which has been placed on a Chilean mountain top, where ultra-clear skies give it an unobstructed view.

Riding on the back of the conventional Blanco telescope’s 4 metre wide mirror, the Dark Energy Camera can see light from over 100 thousand galaxies, up to 8 billion light-years away.

“The achievement of first light through the Dark Energy Camera begins a significant new era in our exploration of the cosmic frontier,” said James Siegrist, from the US department of energy, one of the teams working on the camera.

“The results of this survey will bring us closer to understanding the mystery of dark energy, and what it means for the universe.”

It is hoped the new camera will provide an insight into the mystery of so-called dark energy, the force astronomers believe causes the universe’s expansion to keep accelerating.

It will also be the first time scientists can study galaxy clusters, supernovae, and the large-scale clumping of galaxies using just one device.

The 570-megapixel camera is made out of 62 linked scanners, giving it unprecedented sensitivity, especially to red light and infrared light. 

The movement of distant objects means they appear towards the red end of the spectrum – a so-called “redshift”.

Its first image was of a spiral galaxy in the Fornax cluster, about 60 million light years from Earth. Another composite image shows of the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, which lies about 17,000 light years from Earth.