Starlight from eight billion years ago captured on camera The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration have announced the camera, which took eight years to build by scientists on three continents, has achieved first light. The first pictures of the southern sky were taken by the 570-megapixel camera on 12 September. Professor Ofer Lahav, of University College London, who heads the UK arm of the consortium, said: "The achievement of first light through the Dark Energy Camera brings us a step closer to understanding dark energy, one of the biggest mysteries in the whole of physics. The deep observations with the DES camera will tell us why the universe is speeding up and if a major shift is required in our understanding of the universe. The camera, which is roughly the size of a phone booth, is the most powerful survey instrument of its kind, able to see light from over 100,000 galaxies up to 8 billion light years away in each snapshot. The camera's array of 62 devices have an unprecedented sensitivity to very red light and will allow scientists from around the world to pursue investigations ranging from studies of asteroids in our own Solar System to the understanding of the origins and the fate of the universe. Scientists will use the new camera to carry out the largest galaxy survey ever undertaken, and will use that data to probe dark energy by studying galaxy clusters, supernovae and the large-scale clumping of galaxies. Prof Will Percival, of Portsmouth University who co-coordinates the galaxy clustering part of the investigation, said: "This will be the largest galaxy survey of its kind, and the galaxy shapes and positions will tell us a great deal about the nature of the physical process that we call Dark Energy, but do not currently understand." Researcher Prof Richard McMahon, of Cambridge University, said: "The construction of a 3-dimensional map of the galaxies just based on their positions and optical colours is extremely challenging and will require sophisticated computational and statistical techniques. The addition of galaxy near infrared colours from another UK led sky mapping survey, the VISTA Hemisphere Survey, will greatly improve the accuracy of the map. The Dark Energy Survey is expected to begin in December after the camera is fully tested and will take advantage of the excellent atmospheric conditions in the Chilean Andes to deliver pictures with the sharpest resolution seen in such a wide-field astronomy survey. Over five years the survey will create detailed colour images of one-eighth of the sky, or 5,000 square degrees, to discover and measure 300 million galaxies, 100,000 galaxy clusters, and 4,000 supernovae.