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The Most Beautiful Sights in Space Get an Art Exhibition

At Fermilab Art Gallery, cosmology collaborative The Dark Energy Survey shows off their images of space in the name of art.

Images taken by the DES Collaboration with the DECAM camera mounted on the Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile

Science is often visually stunning, but rarely do scientists flaunt the aesthetic qualities of their work. The Dark Energy Survey (DES), an international collaborative of over 400 scientists working on universal cosmology, is hoping to rupture this paradigm in their ongoing exhibition at Fermilab Art Gallery, titled Art of Darkness.

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Armed with one of the largest digital cameras in the world—clocking in at an incredible 570 megapixels—DES participants in collaboration with Fermilab scientists helmed by Brian Yanny and Nikolay Kuropatkin have taken fantastical images of the universe's near-infinite celestial landscapes. Although these photographs were taken for scientific purposes, for this exhibition DES and Fermilab have “chosen [images] for their beauty more than their scientific characteristics,” according to their press release.

Martin Murphy, one of the individuals behind the processing of the show’s images, spoke with The Creators Project regarding the creation of these images: “The Dark Energy Camera is attached to the 4-meter Blanco telescope, which is part of the complex of telescopes that make up the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, situated 2,200 meters high in the Andes. The DECam is a digital camera, similar to the one in your phone or to a DSLR, but it is much more sensitive at longer wavelengths,” explains Murphy. “The camera produces images that are 1GB each. Over the course of one night of observing, the camera will produce between 500GB to 1TB of data. 45 seconds is a typical exposure time. Each image in the show is a combination of three different images—red filter, green filter, blue filter. When the images are combined, they yield a true color image.”

Brian Nord, an astrophysicist and participant of DES, further explained some of the complexities involved in the production of these galactic images, “The data from these images are transferred to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, where most of the processing takes place. Artefacts are removed, such as satellite, cosmic ray, and airplane trails. The images are taken under different environmental conditions and so they need to be calibrated, which takes up to eight hours for a single image. After calibrations are finished, the images are ready for science and to be combined into color images.”

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The exhibition is a unique opportunity for those who might be inclined toward art and science; to delve into whichever field you might be less familiar with. These images stand at an interesting intersection of both, bridging a cultural gap that is often sealed off and never crossed.

Art of Darkness can be viewed at Fermilab Art Gallery, located in Batavia, Illinois just an hour outside of Chicago, until April 29. Check out the work of The Dark Energy Survey here.

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