The Fastest Eye on the Sky: The Vera Rubin Observatory // Sky in January

Talk by Prof. Aaron Roodman, Dept. of Particle Physics & Astrophysics, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University.

What is the Universe made of? In modern cosmology only 4% of the universe is deeply understood, while the other 96%, Dark Energy and Dark Matter, remains a mystery. The Vera Rubin Observatory, currently under construction, will observe billions of galaxies, billions of stars in our own galaxy the Milky Way, as well as millions of objects closer to home in the solar system. Every night over a ten year survey, the Rubin Observatory will observe much of the night sky, so that every portion of the sky will be imaged nearly a thousand times. In this talk I will describe the Rubin observatory and especially its camera, the world’s largest digital imager now under construction at SLAC, and this remarkable set of observations, and how we will be able to “see” the dark portion of our universe in unprecedented detail.

We will also have the Sky in January.