All in all we've contributed ~80% of the high redshift supernovae (z>0.5) used for cosmology, which is a massive step up in our ability to determine the nature of dark energy. www.uq.edu.au/news/article...

Plot showing that the supernova data prefers an accelerating universe over the simplest non-accelerating one.

We found really conclusive evidence that the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe is real. And found tantalising hints that the dark energy (the name we give to whatever is causing the acceleration) might be changing with time (w>-1 for the experts).

Here's the light curves of 1635 supernovae measured in four colours. They brighten and fade in a couple of months, but their peak brightness is always about the same -- allowing us to use them as standard candles to measure the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe.

Image of two light beams approaching Earth. The one emitted further away is redder on arrival than the one emitted closer.

Our DES supernova team discovered thousands of supernovae, and added 1635 of them to the "Hubble Diagram" to measure dark energy. About 1100 of them are so far away that they emitted the light we're seeing *before the Earth even formed*!!

Image of star field with a distant galaxy zoomed in showing a supernova exploding.

We did it! Today we released the Dark Energy Survey supernova cosmology results!!! A massive effort from many people. This has been the prime focus of my research for the last decade, and it was an honour to co-lead this working group. What did we find?....

Love it! We tried hard to get those plots looking good. The light curves rainbow is probably the favourite plot that I've ever made for a paper. (And the colour scheme was a group meeting discussion point for about a month!!) 😀 Maria Vincenzi was the other colour-map aficionado making nice plots.