Physics Hybrid Colloquium

Date:
30
Thursday
June
2022
Colloquia
Time: 11:15-12:30
Title: The construction of the Vera Rubin Observatory and cosmological measurements of dark matter and dark energy with LSST
Location: Edna and K.B. Weissman Building of Physical Sciences
Lecturer: Zeljko Ivesic
Organizer: Faculty of Physics
Details: University of Washington
Abstract: The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the first project to be undertaken ... Read more The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the first project to be undertaken at the new Vera Rubin Observatory, will be the most comprehensive optical astronomical survey ever undertaken. Starting in 2024, Rubin Observatory will obtain panoramic images covering the sky visible from its location in Chile every clear night for ten years. The resulting hundreds of petabytes of imaging data, essentially a digital color movie of the night sky, will include about 40 billion stars and galaxies, and will be used for investigations ranging from cataloging dangerous near-Earth asteroids to fundamental physics such as characterization of dark matter and dark energy. I will start my presentation with an overview of LSST science drivers and system design, and continue with a construction status report for the Vera Rubin Observatory. I will conclude with a brief discussion of a few Big Data challenges that need to be addressed before LSST data can be used for precise cosmological measurements.
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