Speaker
Masao Sako
(University of Pennsylvania)
Description
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) will use a new massive imaging instrument, the
Dark Energy Camera (DECam), to study the properties of the mysterious,
presently-dominant source of energy that is causing the universe to go through
an accelerating expansion. The camera will be installed on the 4-meter Blanco
telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and commissioning is
expected to start in the end of 2011. Over five years, DES will carry out a
high-precision photometric survey of 5000 square degrees to detect and study
the properties of over 300 million galaxies in the southern sky. Repeat
observations of a smaller patch in the sky will discover thousands of Type Ia
supernovae for precision distance measurements. We will describe how the four
complementary probes of dark energy -- weak lensing, galaxy clusters, baryon
acoustic oscillations, and supernova -- will help improve our understanding of
the nature of the mysterious dark energy.
Author
Masao Sako
(University of Pennsylvania)
