The Dark Energy Survey is a project to study the nature of the dark energy and the cosmic acceleration through two, coupled surveys. The first is a 5000 square degree multiband, optical survey of the south galactic cap region, and the second is a 40 square degree time domain search for supernovae. The project will be carried out on the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) Blanco 4m telescope using up to 525 nights over five years.
The survey will study the expansion history of the universe and the growth of density perturbations using four distinct techniques: (1) a 4000 square degree survey in collaboration with the South Pole Telescope mm-wave survey, (2) a weak lensing study, (3) a galaxy angular power spectrum distance measurement study, and (4) a SNe Ia distance measurement study. Each of these projects will be the best in their class at the time of the survey, and each will independently constrain the dark energy equation of state parameter with an accuracy of 0.05 to 0.10. Follow the Science or Documents link for additional details.
The project is a collaboration involving Fermilab, the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory, the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, the Institut d'Estudie Espacials de Catalunya and Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies in Spain, the University College London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Portsmouth in the UK, the University of Michigan, the Argonne National Laboratory and the Observatorio Nacional de Brazil. Follow the Collaboration link for more details.
The project development phase involves building a large CCD camera (500Megapixel, 3 square degree active solid angle; led by Fermilab) and building a data management system to process, archive and serve the science ready data (led by U Illinois). The build phase for this project is 2004-2010, and the survey operations is 2010-2016. For more information, follow the Schedule or Documents link.
The Dark Energy Survey