This cartoon is part of the DES Y3 #Darkbites social media series. It was drawn to illustrate the Y3 key paper describing cosmology results from the combined analysis of galaxy clustering and weak lensing. The paper’s title is, “Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing” (arXiv:2105.13549).

alt="Cartoon of the three kinds of two-point correlation measurements used in the DES combined galaxy clustering and weak lensing analysis: shape-shape, position-position, and shape-position."

The post’s associated text was:

The properties of dark matter and energy, which make up 95% of the Universe, affect how matter is distributed on large scales. We study this distribution by mapping the positions of galaxies (red) and the effect of gravitational lensing on the shapes of more distant galaxies (yellow).

The main DES Year 3 cosmology paper combines work highlighted in other #DarkBites, analyzing these maps with three measurements: cosmic shear, galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing, to give us our best understanding of the dark universe.

Here’s a link to the post. The twitter thread of the Y3 Darkbites posts begins here. The cartoons also being shared on the DES facebook and instagram pages.

Here is an animated version of the cartoon: alt="Same cartoon as above, with different components appearing in sequence to highlight the three kinds of cross-correlations."

And here’s a version of the illustration without the hashtag: alt="Same cartoon as above, just without the #darkbites hashtag."

Note that I have a number of versions of the still cartoon with different elements appearing or disappearing that could be used for explaining 3x2pt measurements for talks. If you contact me to request it I can send you a link to the Dropbox folder where you can download those files.