Credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgments: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)

The Dark Energy Camera's 1 millionth exposure. At the time of this exposure DECam was making an of a galaxy cluster. The 1 millionth exposure has been combined with 127 earlier exposures to make this view of the field.  This demonstrates the power of DECam and an archive of a million exposures. The biggest galaxy in the field is the face-on spiral galaxy ESO 440-11. Several galaxy clusters, thousands of background galaxies and a few handfuls of foreground Milky Way stars can be seen in this “random” image of the sky.  One of the most powerful digital cameras in the world, the Dark Energy Camera was designed specifically for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). It was funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and was built and tested at DOE's Fermilab.

Provider: NOIRLab

Image Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/ann21023a/

Curator: NSF's NOIRLab, Tucson, AZ, USA

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License