Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2026

MAY-JUNE 2026 lions of galaxies, detect thousands of supernovae, and find patterns of cosmic structure that will help reveal the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is accelerating the ex- pansion of our Universe. From 2013 to 2019, the DES Collab- oration carried out a deep, wide- area survey of the sky using the 570- megapixel DOE-fabricated Dark En- ergy Camera (DECam), mounted on the NSF Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. For 758 nights over six years, the DES Collaboration recorded in- T he Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an international, collaborative effort to map hundreds of mil- DES scientists release analysis of all six years of survey data by NOIRLab Josie Fenske