The first images are in from the Dark Energy Camera. A week ago, astronomers and researchers from around the world began a collaborative experiment using the super-powerful camera to create a massive three-dimensional map that delves deep into the universe.The camera at the center of the Dark Energy Survey astronomical experiment in Chile is cataloging the sky, bit by bit over 525 nights. "It will record information on over 300 million galaxies, most so faint that their light is around 1 million times fainter than the dimmest star that can be seen with the naked eye," according to the survey's website.
Galaxies up to 8 billion light-years away will be captured by the so-called DECam, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The camera can "reach wide and deep into the night sky," the lab said, thanks to components such as 62 charge-coupled devices invented at the lab.The camera -- a very sensitive 570-megapixel device -- is high in the Chilean Andes, but U.S. institutions have provided essential pieces for this unprecedented effort, including the "world's largest filter changer" from the University of Michigan and a "one-of-a-kind cryogenics system to keep photo chips at minus 100 degrees Celsius," from Fermilab in Chicago.
Each night, the state-of-the-art camera takes 400 images, says the Dark Energy Survey website, each one of those a gigabyte in size.DECam is the largest digital camera ever built, according to the Energy Department's website, and includes mirrors measuring 3 feet across. It weighs about 5 tons.The whopper-size photos this huge camera takes are sent to the National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Illinois to be reduced and stored. That facility creates "combined images," the survey site says, before the galaxies and stars that they reveal are identified, cataloged, measured and stored in a database.
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