THE DARK ENERGY CAMERA Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. The Dark Energy Camera is a new imager with a 2.2 diameter field of view mounted at the prime focus of the Victor M. Blanco 4 m telescope on Cerro Tololo near La Serena, Chile. The camera was designed and constructed by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration and meets or exceeds the stringent requirements designed for the wide-field and supernova surveys for which the collaboration uses it. The camera consists of a five-element optical corrector, seven filters, a shutter with a 60 cm aperture, and a charge-coupled device (CCD) focal plane of 250 m thick fully depleted CCDs cooled inside a vacuum Dewar. The 570 megapixel focal plane comprises 62 2k 4k CCDs for imaging and 12 2k 2k CCDs for guiding and focus. The CCDs have 15 m 15 m pixels with a plate scale of 0.263 pixel-1. A hexapod system provides state-of-the-art focus and alignment capability. The camera is read out in 20 s with 6-9 electron readout noise. This paper provides a technical description of the camera's engineering, construction, installation, and current status.

published proceedings

  • ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 36.466

author list (cited authors)

  • Flaugher, B., Diehl, H. T., Honscheid, K., Abbott, T., Alvarez, O., Angstadt, R., ... Yanny, B.

citation count

  • 705

complete list of authors

  • Flaugher, B||Diehl, HT||Honscheid, K||Abbott, TMC||Alvarez, O||Angstadt, R||Annis, JT||Antonik, M||Ballester, O||Beaufore, L||Bernstein, GM||Bernsteing, RA||Bigelow, B||Bonati, M||Boprie, D||Brooks, D||Buckley-Geer, EJ||Campa, J||Cardiel-Sas, L||Castander, FJ||Castilla, J||Cease, H||Cela-Ruiz, JM||Chappa, S||Chi, E||Cooper, C||da Costa, LN||Dede, E||Derylo, G||DePoy, DL||de Vicente, J||Doel, P||Drlica-Wagner, A||Eiting, J||Elliott, AE||Emes, J||Estrada, J||Neto, A Fausti||Finley, DA||Flores, R||Frieman, J||Gerdes, D||Gladders, MD||Gregory, B||Gutierrez, GR||Hao, J||Holland, SE||Holm, S||Huffman, D||Jackson, C||James, DJ||Jonas, M||Karcher, A||Karliner, I||Kent, S||Kessler, R||Kozlovsky, M||Kron, RG||Kubik, D||Kuehn, K||Kuhlmann, S||Kuk, K||Lahav, O||Lathrop, A||Lee, J||Levi, ME||Lewis, P||Li, TS||Mandrichenko, I||Marshall, JL||Martinez, G||Merritt, KW||Miquel, R||Munoz, F||Neilsen, EH||Nichol, RC||Nord, B||Ogando, R||Olsen, J||Palaio, N||Patton, K||Peoples, J||Plazas, AA||Rauch, J||Reil, K||Rheault, J-P||Roe, NA||Rogers, H||Roodman, A||Sanchez, E||Scarpine, V||Schindler, RH||Schmidt, R||Schmitt, R||Schubnell, M||Schultz, K||Schurter, P||Scott, L||Serrano, S||Shaw, TM||Smith, RC||Soares-Santos, M||Stefanik, A||Stuermer, W||Suchyta, E||Sypniewski, A||Tarle, G||Thaler, J||Tighe, R||Tran, C||Tucker, D||Walker, AR||Wang, G||Watson, M||Weaverdyck, C||Wester, W||Woods, R||Yanny, B

publication date

  • November 2015