A camera specializing in dark energy reaches its 10th-year milestone and captures a fascinating image of the glowing red Lobster Nebula.
At the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Coquimbo, Chile, one charge-coupled device (CCD) device that's specially designed to capture dark energy has turned ten years old. The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) is a high-performance, wide-field CCD imager that is mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope, a 13-foot or four-meter telescope at the Chilean observatory, where parts of the universe are being captured. Its latest image is that of NGC 6357, nicknamed Lobster Nebula, which glows red in the image.
How the Dark Energy Camera Works
The Dark Energy Camera or DECam is part of the Dark Energy Survey program, which uses the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope built in the 1970s. It was upgraded with the installation of the DECam to capture dark energy.
The Dark Energy Camera is equipped with five optical lenses, a Hexapod positioning and alignment system, a shutter, several color filters, and a digital imager. One of the DECam's five lenses measures about 3.3 feet across and weighs up to 176 kilograms, and is the largest optical corrector component being used in astronomy today.
Another critical component of the Dark Energy Camera is its imager, which features 74 CCDs that are arranged in a hexagonal layout on the focal plane of the DECam, where the space images are recorded. The DECam has the speed and efficiency to read out in less than 30 seconds, which is faster than most CCD cameras in use in astronomy today.
The CCDs present in the DECam, which are ten times thicker than regular CCDs, were developed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) specifically for the purpose of observing red light from distant galaxies, such as that which could be found in the Lobster Nebula.
What is the Lobster Nebula?
On Monday, in celebration of the Dark Energy Camera's 10th anniversary, the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory or NOIRLab shared an image of NGC 6357, or the Lobster Nebula, a star-forming region that sits about 8,000 light-years away from Earth, tucked into the Scorpius constellation. The image shows the NGC 6357 spanning 400 light years across, with bright young stars littering its massive clouds of dust and gas, Space.com reported.
Scientists have observed what they call an open star cluster at the heart of the Lobster Nebula, describing it as a "loose group of very young and massive stars." Meanwhile, the cluster is surrounded by bright little lights called protostars, which are nascent stars that are tightly wrapped with dust and gas. Scientists also noted that the nebula is characterized by interstellar winds, galactic radiation, and powerful magnetic fields that cause gas and dust within the nebula to be squeezed and twisted.
These stunning details are captured by the Dark Energy Camera, which has the capacity to take 400 to 500 images every night. The DECam recently reached a milestone of not just ten years but also a million individual exposures.
The newest image of the Lobster Nebula was unveiled during the 10 years: Looking Back, Looking Forward conference that took place in Tucson, Arizona, on Monday.
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