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World’s Most Powerful Digital Camera Begins Hunt for Dark Energy

By Guest PostSeptember 22, 2012Scienceancient starlight, atmospheric condition, billion years, brazil, brenna flaugher, camera, cerro tololo, Chicago, Chile, chilean andes, chris smith, dark energy, des, distant galaxy, earth, expansion, fermilab, galaxy cluster, Germany, gravitational lensing, inter american, james siegrist, kavli institute, mystery, ngc 1365, noao, observatory, physics, southern sky, spain, spiral galaxy, switzerland, telescope, united kingdom, universe, university, victor m blanco

Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time.

That light may hold within it the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: Why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. (more…)

Photo Proof: Super Stars of the Universe Have Humble Beginnings

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The first close-up picture of a nascent super massive star and its surroundings has shown that the highest mass stars in the universe form just like their smaller counterparts. They are born from swirling disks of gas and dust, rather than from violent stellar collisions.

“How these high mass stars form has been a debate for 20 years,” said Stefan Kraus, a research fellow in the University of Michigan Department of Astronomy who is first author of a paper on the findings published July 15 in Nature.

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World’s Most Powerful Digital Camera Begins Hunt for Dark Energy

Photo Proof: Super Stars of the Universe Have Humble Beginnings