The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites all to a colloquium featuring Dr. Mario Juric, Department of Physics, University of Washington. Dr. Juric will present his talk, “Towards Science with LSST: Project Update and What to Expect”, Tuesday, January 17, at 4:10 p.m. in Webster 17.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large-aperture, wide-field, ground-based telescope that will survey half the sky every few nights in six optical bands from 320 to 1050 nm. It will explore a wide range of astrophysical questions, ranging from discovering “killer” asteroids, to examining the nature of dark energy. The LSST will produce on average 15 terabytes of data per night, yielding an (uncompressed) data set of over 100 petabytes at the end of its 10-year mission. It’s currently being built on Cerro Pachon in Chile, and expected to begin operations by late 2022.
In this talk, I will review the science goals and the technical design of the LSST, give an update on the status of LSST construction, and discuss data products and services that the LSST will provide to the community. “Level 1” data products will be generated continuously every observing night and include measurements such as alerts to objects that have changed brightness or position. “Level 2” data products will be made available as annual Data Releases, designed to enable systematics-limited science. Finally, approximately 10% of LSST’s computing capability will set aside for community use, enabling custom user-driven analyses that take advantage of co-location of computation with the data. Together, these products and services will open an exciting new window into the time-domain and faint universe.
