Reaching for the sky with SDSS and LSST

Zeljko Ivazic

University of Washington


Abstract:

Despite a several thousand years long history, sky surveying is experiencing a bonanza as detectors, telescopes and computers become ever more powerful. I will discuss how the unprecedentedly accurate and diverse data from the optical Sloan Digital Sky Survey have recently enabled numerous exciting discoveries. I will use three specific examples (asteroids, quasar variability, and mapping of the Milky Way stellar distribution in a 7-dimensional phase space spanned by the position and velocity vectors, and metallicity), to give a preview of what to expect from the upcoming next-generation surveys, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.