Beth Willman; Interdisciplinary Colloquium Recording

Dr. Beth Willman, Deputy Director of the National Center for Optical-Infrared Astronomy, continued CIERA’s Interdisciplinary Colloquia series this November in presenting her talk, The Most Magnificent Map Ever Made. Hosted by CIERA director, Vicky Kalogera, Dr. Willman’s talk discussed the mission of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and how it is possible for the scientific community at large to use the LSST for research.

In 2022, the LSST will undertake the creation of an 800-frame video of half of the sky in six optical banpasses over the course of a decade.The LSST will prove incredibly valuable in making new discoveries of an enormous amount and variety of celestial objects.

However, viewing a single LSST image at full resolution would require 400 high-definition TVs, spanning about half the size of a basketball court. To enable the scientific community at large to utilize the LSST’s high volume and high velocity data set to conduct research, the LSST is now being built to convert its 3 million constituent images into a set of time domain and annual data projects.

 

Credit: Dr. Beth Willman / CIERA

  • Science,
  • Interdisciplinary