Donald Petravick

Dark Energy Survey

(jrr)
Jun 2016 - Jun 2017

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

(jrw)
Sep 2014 - Dec 2019

2019

Donald Petravick, Eric Morganson, Monika Adamow, Doug Friedel, Robert Gruendl, Michael Johnson (2019): Processing Dark Energy Camera Data to Make the World’s Best Map of the Night Sky, 2019 Blue Waters Annual Report, pp58-59

2016

Donald Petravick (2016): Deployment of The Dark Energy Survey Workflows, 2016 Blue Waters Annual Report, pp39-41

Dark energy survey publicly releases first three years of data


Jan 10, 2018

At a special session held during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., scientists on the Dark Energy Survey (DES) announced today the public release of their first three years of data. This first major release of data from the Survey includes information on about 400 million astronomical objects, including distant galaxies billions of light-years away as well as stars in our own galaxy.


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Mapping the skies with Blue Waters


Aug 8, 2017

Space is filled with an unseen dark energy. So confirm new measurements from data processed by the Dark Energy Survey Data Management (DESDM) project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) the DESDM data verifies the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter.


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Researchers map dark matter and dark energy in space


Aug 8, 2017

New measurements from data processed at the University of Illinois verify the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent of the universe’s contents. The new results come from data from the first year of observations of the Dark Energy Survey. These measurements of the amount and distribution of dark matter in the present-day cosmos were made with a precision that, for the first time, rivals that of measurements of the early universe captured by the European Space Agency's orbiting Planck observatory.


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New Clues to Universe Structure Revealed


Aug 7, 2017

What is our universe made of, and has its composition changed over time? Scientists have new insights about these fundamental questions, thanks to an international collaboration of more than 400 scientists called the Dark Energy Survey . Three scientists from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are part of this group that is helping to further our understanding of the structure of the universe. The advances in astrophysics from DES are crucial to preparations for two upcoming space missions that will probe similar questions about the nature of the universe: ESA`s Euclid mission (which has significant NASA participation) and NASA`s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope mission, both expected to launch in the 2020s.


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Survey reveals most accurate measurement of dark matter structure in the Universe


Aug 5, 2017

Imagine planting a single seed and, with great precision, being able to predict the exact height of the tree that grows from it. Now imagine traveling to the future and snapping photographic proof that you were right. If you think of the seed as the early universe, and the tree as the universe the way it looks now, you have an idea of what the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration has just done. In a presentation at the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields meeting at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, DES scientists unveiled the most accurate measurement ever made of the present large-scale structure of the Universe.


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Into the Unknown: Researchers Think They've Proven the Existence of Dark Matter


Aug 5, 2017

Three scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are part of this group that is helping to further our understanding of the structure of the universe. Both will prepare scientists for future surveys, including ones with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Map of dark matter made from gravitational lensing measurements of 26 million galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey.


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Most accurate measurement of universe’s dark matter unveiled


Aug 5, 2017

With a survey covering about 1/30th of the entire sky and spanning several billion light-years in extent, scientists have made the most accurate measurement of universe's dark matter. The results support the view that dark matter and dark energy make up most of the cosmos. The scientists unveiled the dark matter map in a presentation at the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields meeting at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.


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Astronomers Unveil Most Accurate Map Of Dark Matter In The Universe


Aug 5, 2017

New research conducted as a part of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey (DES) has used the way mass distorts light to produce a bigger, more highly detailed map of the Universe's dark matter structure. Today we can use the fact that mass changes space to "see" dark matter by measuring how light behind it distorts as it passes by, giving us a way to measure the amount and distribution of both kinds of matter across a portion of the Universe. The results are part of the Dark Energy Survey, and show how dark matter is distributed across the galaxy - scientists hitherto used models to show where it fell, largely based the Standard Model of particle physics, an incomplete theory that was nonetheless the best explanation of how matter across the universe interacts.


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Survey Provides High-Precision Measurements of Universe’s Makeup


Aug 3, 2017

New measurements – made possible by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera in Chile – of the amount and “clumpiness” of dark matter in the present-day cosmos were made with a precision that rivals that of inferences from the early universe by a space telescope, the European Space Agency’s Planck observatory. The new result by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration is close to “forecasts” made from Planck measurements of the distant past, which allow scientists to understand more about the ways the universe has evolved over 14 billion years.


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"Seeing the Beginning of Time" Features the Dark Energy Survey


Jun 14, 2017

“Seeing the Beginning of Time” takes viewers on a visually compelling journey through deep space and time. The 50-minute, 4K science documentary was co-produced by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Thomas Lucas Productions as part of a National Science Foundation supported project called CADENS (Centrality of Advanced Digitally Enabled Science). Donna Cox, director of NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL), leads the CADENS project to help raise public awareness about computational scientific discovery.


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