News

ICG Dark Energy Survey Conference (26th June - 1st July 2011)

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:33:00 GMT

The Institute for Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) hosted an international collaboration meeting for  the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The meeting was attended by more than 120 astronomers from the 23 DES member institutes, located in the United States, Brazil, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The Dark Energy Survey is designed to help uncover the nature of the mysterious ‘dark energy’ which gives rise to a repulsive gravitational force and is causing the expansion rate of the universe to accelerate. The collaboration is building a new optical instrument and large digital camera that will be mounted on the Blanco Four-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, high in the Chilean Andes. Once complete next year, the collaboration will spend five years surveying the southern sky. As one of the first collaboration members, ICG has played a key role in the development of the survey, helping to purchase the glass from which the new lenses were made. ICG members play leading roles in the groups working to exploit the science results that will be coming from the survey. While in Portsmouth, collaboration members were hard at work making plans for analysing the tremendous amount of data that the survey will provide. However, they did have time to enjoy our cream tea, an atypical stretch of good weather, and a banquet held aboard the HMS Warrior.