The Dark Energy Camera (the "DECam") is a specially designed camera newly mounted on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and designed to take very wide field astronomical photographs towards the red and infrared wavelengths. The goal is to observe and catalog
Type Ia supernova (which are white dwarf supernova),
baryon (matter) wave fluctuations,
galaxy clusters, and
gravitational lensing. All of these are potential measures of the
amount of dark energy (which drives the expansion of the Universe) and
distributions and fluctuations of dark matter (which involves galaxy formation, distribution, and rotation). According to
Fermilab, the DECam has 62 charged-coupled devices (CCDs), which record a total of 570 megapixels per photo. Below the page break, is a very high resolution set of photos (which are how the DECam's photos are collected) from
Fermilab's press release. The project involves Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the US.
Click to enlarge. Go
here for more images.
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