Space Daily (Jan. 12) -- At a special session held during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., scientists on the Dark Energy Survey announced the public release of their first three years of data. The release includes information on about 400 million astronomical objects, including distant galaxies billions of light years away. Images from the Dark Energy Camera, one of the most powerful digital imaging devices in existence used by the survey, are processed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois.