The Dark Energy Survey: Education and Public Outreach

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is the leading ground-based cosmology experiment in the world at the moment. This 100 million dollar project was 10 years in the making, but is now well underway.

What is DES? It is six year study of the southern sky that will test cosmology to unprecedented precision. It uses a 520 Megapixel digital camera (DECam) that is mounted on the 4 metre (``Blanco'') optical telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in the Chilean Andes. Not only will DES make an impact in cosmology, it will also generate a wealth of discoveries in other areas, e.g. objects in the distant solar system, new companions to the Milky Way, distant black holes, etc.

The UK has been involved in DES since the project started. There are over 300 scientists in the international DES collaboration, of which almost 100 are in the UK (the remainder are in the USA, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Germany, and Switzerland).

DES has enormous potential for public engagement: not only are the concepts behind dark energy in themselves hugely compelling, we routinely generate fabulous images that capture the public's imagination.

It is essential that more time and effort goes into DES E/PO now, because the survey will be reaching its peak science productivity within the next two years. Just as DES is winding down, LSST will be nearing completion. As many of the E/PO materials developed for DES can be transferred directly to LSST, the impact of this fellowship will last for many years to come.

There are three, interlinked, aspects to my proposal: Improving the Dark Energy Survey webpages; Increasing the impact of Dark Energy Survey social media; Increasing the reach and significance of the Dark Energy Survey on UK society. The first two aspects have a global reach, the third is UK centric. The underlying theme is that by exploiting the creative talents of DES members world wide, I will be able to enhance STFC related E/PO significantly across the UK.