The Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.

This image of the NGC 1398 galaxy was taken with the Dark Energy Camera. This galaxy lives in the Fornax cluster, roughly 65 million light years from Earth. It is 135,000 light years in diameter, just slightly larger than our own Milky Way galaxy, and contains more than a hundred million stars. Credit: Dark Energy Survey.

Scientists build a prototype of the Dark Energy Camera, which will survey about one-tenth of the sky to measure 300 million galaxies and discover thousands of supernovae. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.

Composite picture of stars over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.