IEEC-ICE researchers collaborate in the Dark Energy Survey, a public catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects
This catalog is one of the largest astronomical catalogs released to date
IEEC researchers at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC) have participated in the international collaboration that has allowed this release
The Dark Energy Survey (DES), a global collaboration including the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, has released DR2, the second data release in the survey’s seven-year history. The initiative releases a massive, public collection of astronomical data and calibrated images from six years of surveys.
The researchers from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC) Francisco J. Castander, Pablo Fosalba, Enrique Gaztañaga and Santiago Serrano, and Martin Crocce, also from ICE, have been involved in the development of DR2: the catalog is the culmination of over a half-decade of astronomical data collection and analysis with the ultimate goal of understanding the accelerating expansion of the Universe and the phenomenon of dark energy, which is thought to be responsible for this accelerated expansion.
DR2 is one of the largest astronomical catalogs released to date. Including a mapping of nearly 700 million astronomical objects, it builds on the 400 million objects cataloged with the survey’s prior data release (DR1) and also improves on it by refining calibration techniques, which, with the deeper combined images of DR2, lead to improved estimates of the amount and distribution of matter in the Universe.
Astronomical researchers around the world can access these unprecedented data and mine them to make new discoveries about the Universe, complementary to the studies being carried out by the DES collaboration. The full data release is online and available to the public.
DES was designed to map hundreds of millions of galaxies and to discover thousands of supernovae in order to measure the history of cosmic expansion and the growth of large-scale structure in the Universe, both of which reflect the nature and amount of dark energy present on it. The survey data enables many other investigations in addition to those targeting dark energy, covering a vast range of cosmic distances —from discovering new nearby solar system objects to investigating the nature of the first star-forming galaxies in the early Universe.
"This is a momentous milestone. For six years, the Dark Energy Survey collaboration took pictures of distant celestial objects in the night sky. Now, after carefully checking the quality and calibration of the images captured by the Dark Energy Camera, we are releasing this second batch of data to the public," said DES Director Rich Kron, researcher from Fermilab and the University of Chicago.
Among other results, the extensive DR2 galaxy catalog allowed the researchers, along with data from the LIGO experiment, to estimate the location of a black hole merger and, independent of other techniques, infer the value of the Hubble constant, a key cosmological parameter. Combining their data with other surveys, DES scientists have also been able to generate a complete map of Milky Way’s dwarf satellites, giving insight into how our own galaxy was assembled and how it compares with cosmologists’ predictions.
About the Dark Energy Survey
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a collaboration of more than 400 scientists from 26 institutions in seven countries. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Funding Authority for Studies and Projects in Brazil, Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the German Research Foundation and the collaborating institutions in DES, the list of which can be found at this link.
Links
– IEEC
– ICE
– Dark Energy Survey (DES)
More information
The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC — Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya) promotes and coordinates space research and technology development in Catalonia for the benefit of society. IEEC fosters collaborations both locally and worldwide and is an efficient agent of knowledge, innovation and technology transfer. As a result of over 20 years of high-quality research, done in collaboration with major international organisations, IEEC ranks among the best international research centers, focusing on areas such as: astrophysics, cosmology, planetary science, and Earth Observation. IEEC’s engineering division develops instrumentation for ground- and space-based projects, and has extensive experience in working with private or public organisations from the aerospace and other innovation sectors.
IEEC is a private non-profit foundation, governed by a Board of Trustees composed of Generalitat de Catalunya and four other institutions that each have a research unit, which together constitute the core of IEEC R&D activity: the University of Barcelona (UB) with the research unit ICCUB — Institute of Cosmos Sciences; the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) with the research unit CERES — Center of Space Studies and Research; the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) with the research unit CTE — Research Group in Space Sciences and Technologies; the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) with the research unit ICE — Institute of Space Sciences. IEEC is a CERCA (Centres de Recerca de Catalunya) center.
Image
Image: DarkEnergySurvey.jpg
Caption: Elliptical galaxy NGC 474 with star shells. Elliptical galaxies are characterized by their relatively smooth appearance as compared with spiral galaxies, one of which is to the left of NGC 474, which is oriented with South to the top and West to the left.
Credits: DES/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Acknowledgments: Image processing: DES, Jen Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin.
Contacts
IEEC Communication Office
Barcelona, Spain
Ana Montaner and Rosa Rodríguez
E-mail: comunicacio@ieec.cat
Lead Researcher
Barcelona, Spain
Francisco J. Castander
Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC)
E-mail: fjc@ieec.cat