Observatory Time: Dark Energy Fill My Sails

Looking around us, we see an increasingly strange, accelerating, universe, which is not well understood.

Physicists are moving towards a model of our universe where only 5% of it is made up form ordinary matter.

It is reckoned that- overwhelmingly-the universe may be composed of Dark Energy- of which very little is known.

The pictures in this book were made in response to the inauguration, in 2012, of the Dark Energy Survey which will attempt to begin charting the origins and nature of Dark Energy.

This extraordinary projects is being undertaken at the Inter-American Observatory, mounted at Cerro Tololo, high in the Chilean Andes.

The Dark Energy Camera itself sits on top of the 4-meter Victor Blanco Telescope, inside the dome which appears at a point of reference in several of the photographs.

It is entirely possible that this site may become one of the most crucial places on our planet, as it begins to cast some intelligible lights on that unfathomable entity we call Dark Energy.

2014