The Dark Energy Survey : Status Report and Early Science Results

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011 was awarded for the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Yet the physical origin of cosmic acceleration (also known as "dark energy") remains a mystery. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a photometric survey designed to address the dark energy conundrum  by measuring the history of cosmic
expansion and of the growth of structure through four complementary techniques: galaxy
clusters, large-scale galaxy clustering, weak gravitational lensing, and supernovae. The DES collaboration has built a new, 570-megapixel, digital camera for the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to carry out a deep, wide-area sky survey of 300 million galaxies and a narrower, time-domain survey that will discover 4000 supernovae over 525 nights starting in Sept. 2013. This talk will overview the DES project, which achieved `first light' in Sept. 2012, describe early science results from commissioning and science verification of the instrument, and discuss the plans and goals of the survey.