8–13 Aug 2011
Rhode Island Convention Center
US/Eastern timezone

Studying Cosmic Acceleration with the Dark Energy Survey

11 Aug 2011, 10:50
20m
556 (Rhode Island Convention Center)

556

Rhode Island Convention Center

Parallel contribution Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

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.

Primary author

Masao Sako (University of Pennsylvania)

Presentation materials