The Blanco telescope in Chile is now home to DECam.
Fermilab physicist Tom Diehl examines the crate containing pieces of the Dark Energy Camera at the Blanco Telescope atop Cerro Tololo in the Chilean Andes.
The crate containing pieces of the Dark Energy Camera imager arrived in November 2011.
Workers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory carefully take apart the crate containing pieces of the Dark Energy Camera.
Fermilab physicist Tom Diehl (left) watches workers from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory unpack pieces of the Dark Energy Camera at the Blanco Telescope.
A support structure for the Dark Energy Camera sits shrouded in plastic while workers disassemble its crate.
Technicians at Fermilab assembled the Dark Energy Camera in a cleanroom. Collaborators from around the United States and the world helped develop its numerous subsystems.
The CCD array of the Dark Energy Camera has a resolution of 570 megapixels—a hundred times that of the average consumer digital camera.
The dry, cool air at the summit of Cerro Tololo allows for exceptional night sky views.
The Dark Energy Survey will look for the signs of dark energy in four different ways. One method involves examining gravitational lensing, or the warping of light from background objects around massive objects in the foreground.