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Applied Math and The New Digital Sky

Student-Run Research Seminar

Speaker: Tony Tyson, UC Davis: Department of Physics
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Wed, Nov 8 2006, 12:10PM

Fueled by advances in software, microelectronics, and large optics fabrication, a new type of sky survey is being designed. In a relentless campaign of 15 second exposures, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will cover the sky to the edge of the optical universe every three nights, opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move on rapid timescales: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, etc. The superb images from the LSST will also chart billions of remote galaxies in 4-D, providing multiple probes of the mysterious Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Thirty TB of multi-color images per night will be transformed into a new view of our four dimensional universe. Applied mathematics challenges exist in all phases of the project, from scheduling optimization to efficient solutions to inverse problems. [ See http://www.lsst.org ]