Press Releases: Community Science & Data Center

4 April 2024: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is conducting a five-year survey to create the largest 3D map of the Universe ever. Astronomers are now performing initial analysis of the survey’s first-year data. Using spectra of nearby galaxies and distant quasars, astronomers report that they have measured the expansion history of the Universe with the highest precision ever, providing an unprecedented look at the nature of dark energy and its effect on the Universe's large-scale structure.

29 January 2024: Journey Through the Universe — a partnership between the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, and the Hawaiʻi Department of Education Hilo-Waiākea Complex Area — celebrates 20 years of cosmic exploration with Hawai‘i students and the community. This year’s exciting program includes classroom presentations, career panels, public events and more!

8 January 2024: Using the DOE-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Dark Energy Survey has obtained the largest supernova sample ever using a single telescope. By analyzing over 1500 distant supernovae, the DES collaboration has placed the strongest constraints on the expansion of the Universe ever obtained using supernovae and found hints that the Universe’s dark energy density may vary with time.

14 December 2023: Big Astronomy: People, Places, Discoveries is an award-winning bilingual planetarium show that takes viewers beyond the dome to behind the scenes of some of Chile’s world-class observatories. Meet the people who work with state-of-the-art telescopes in this feature film that is now free and available online for direct download.

18 October 2023: Astronomers have created a detailed atlas of almost 400,000 galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. The Siena Galaxy Atlas was compiled using data from NSF's NOIRLab telescopes, and is designed to be the pre-eminent digital galaxy atlas for large galaxies. It’s a treasure trove of information for researchers investigating everything from galaxy formation and evolution to dark matter and gravitational waves. It’s also freely available online for the public to explore.

13 June 2023: Nearly two million objects, including distant galaxies, quasars, and stars, comprise the early data release from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. These data will help researchers study the expansion history of the Universe in unprecedented detail and explore other frontier areas of astrophysical research. DESI is funded by the US Department of Energy and managed by Berkeley Lab.

9 June 2023: The One Sky Project, led by the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center and sponsored by the Thirty Meter Telescope, has produced a series of seven short fulldome films and a compiled full-length feature film focusing on cultural and Indigenous astronomy. This international collaboration seeks to build cross-cultural connections and increase understanding of different indigenous perspectives while demonstrating how our one sky connects us all. The films, which received accolades in 2022 and 2023, are now free to download to planetariums around the world.

23 February 2023: The largest two-dimensional map of the sky ever made has grown even larger with the tenth data release from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys — a monumental six-year survey covering nearly half the sky. This new data release adds increased sky and wavelength coverage to the already completed surveys made with data from NSF’s NOIRLab telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

16 February 2023: Journey Through the Universe — a partnership among NSF’s NOIRLab/Gemini, the Hawaiʻi Department of Education Hilo-Waiākea Complex Area, and the TMT International Observatory — returns to its in-person format to share with Hawai‘i students the wonders of the Universe and awareness of careers in science and technology. This year’s exciting program includes classroom presentations, career panels, a teacher workshop and more!

19 January 2023: A startling analysis from Globe at Night — a citizen science program run by NSF’s NOIRLab — concludes that stars are disappearing from human sight at an astonishing rate. The study finds that, to human eyes, artificial lighting has dulled the night sky more rapidly than indicated by satellite measurements. The study published in the journal Science showcases the unique contributions that citizen scientists can make in essential fields of research.

18 January 2023: Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects — arguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the Dark Energy Camera, built by the US Department of Energy, at the NSF’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab.

14 July 2022: NSF's NOIRLab’s Teen Astronomy Café educational program is proud to present its newest initiative: Teen Astronomy Café — To Go! This online, free program provides complete digital education packages, aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, suitable for informal use by students alone and by classroom educators. Using science-grade data actively engages students and encourages them to think and act like scientists. Five ‘Instant Packs’ are now available, each focusing on a different astronomy research topic.

7 July 2022: How often do stars live alone? For brown dwarfs — objects that straddle the boundary between the most massive planets and the smallest stars — astronomers need to uncover more examples of their companions to find out. Ace citizen scientist Frank Kiwy has done just that by using the Astro Data Lab science platform at NSF’s NOIRLab to discover 34 new ultracool dwarf binary systems in the Sun's neighborhood, nearly doubling the number of such systems known.

30 June 2022: An unusual ultra-faint dwarf galaxy has been discovered on the outer fringes of the Andromeda Galaxy thanks to the sharp eyes of an amateur astronomer examining archival data processed by NSF’s NOIRLab’s Community Science and Data Center. Follow-up by professional astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, revealed that the dwarf galaxy — Pegasus V — contains very few heavier elements and is likely to be a fossil of the first galaxies.

15 February 2022: NOIRLab's Journey Through the Universe — returning with an online program this year — will share the wonders of the Universe and career awareness in science and technology with Hawaiʻi students. In partnership with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education Hilo-Waiakea Complex Area, this year’s implementation of the flagship astronomy outreach program consists of a week of virtual programming along with a new cultural exchange program between classrooms in NOIRLab’s host cities in Hawaiʻi, Chile, and Arizona.

3 February 2022: At a press conference today, NSF's NOIRLab announced that it has been selected, along with the SKA Observatory (SKAO), by the International Astronomical Union to host the new IAU Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The center coordinates collaborative multidisciplinary international efforts with institutions and individuals and works across multiple geographic areas to help mitigate the negative impact of satellite constellations on ground-based optical and radio astronomy observations as well as humanity’s enjoyment of the night sky.

13 January 2022: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has cataloged more galaxies than all other previous three-dimensional redshift surveys combined, measuring 7.5 million galaxies in only seven months since beginning science operations. The US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory leads DESI, which is installed at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope.

22 December 2021: Using observations and archival data from several of NSF's NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world and in orbit, astronomers have discovered at least 70 new free-floating planets — planets that wander through space without a parent star — in a nearby region of the Milky Way. This is the largest sample of such planets found in a single group and it nearly doubles the number known over the entire sky.

5 November 2021: NSF’s NOIRLab fully supports the scientific vision of Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s and stands ready, along with our managing organization, AURA, to join our community in advocating for and contributing to the implementation of the survey’s recommendations. NOIRLab along with its partners are honored that the community has ranked the US Extremely Large Telescope Program as the highest ground-based priority in Pathways to Discovery.

23 September 2021: The denizens of the Fornax galaxy cluster populate this image from the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, located in Chile at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. The irregular galaxy lurking in the bottom left corner of this Dark Energy Survey image is NGC 1427A, and its headlong plunge into the heart of the Fornax Cluster over millions of years will eventually result in the galaxy’s disruption.