Over the next two months, astronomers on the mountain will be testing the Dark Energy Camera and tuning the system that comprises the telescope plus the camera.

ENGADGET: DECam: Gazing deep into the final frontier in search of dark energy

Don't expect to see one of these in a commercial DSLR anytime soon (especially now that Mamiya has left the game), but a division of DALSA Semiconductor has successfully manufactured and delivered a 111 megapixel image sensor that's only been topped on these pages by the 500 megapixel monster inside Fermilab's Dark Energy Camera.

ENGADGET: DALSA ships 111 megapixel CCD

When it's bolted onto the Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tolodo Observatory in Chile next month the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera will survey some 300 million galaxies in the southern sky, measuring the speed at which they are moving apart with phenomenal accuracy, and giving the best description yet of the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

BBC: Getting the measure of dark energy

We should have a clearer idea when the results from the Dark Energy Survey and its massive 570-megapixel camera are published in five years' time.

BBC: Getting the measure of dark energy

Switchback after switchback finally leads to the telescope itself, where Annis, a Fermilab astrophysicist and colleagues, have been fine-tuning the attached digital camera that offers the next best hope in answering questions about the true nature of dark energy responsible for the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the observable universe.

FORBES: Dark Energy Camera Could Reshape Einstein Cosmology

The camera should be able to gather enough data to allow all four possible avenues for exploring dark energy: galaxy clusters, supernovae, large-scale galaxy clumping and weak gravitational lensing, at the same time.

ENGADGET: DECam: Gazing deep into the final frontier in search of dark energy