Speaker: Jake Kurlander, 4th-year University of Washington PhD student
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a new 8m-class survey facility presently being commissioned in Chile, expected to begin the 10 yr long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) by the end of 2025. Observing with an unprecedentedly-fast twice-per-night cadence, it will sweep out the visible southern sky every four nights, gathering far more astronomical data than has been measured by any previous survey. High-fidelity simulations with a cutting-edge solar system model expect LSST to discover 3x−7x more objects than are presently known in each orbital class, making LSST the largest source of data for small body science in this and the following decade. This talk will cover the motivation for small solar system body science, previous surveys, open questions, and how LSST will answer them.
Jake Kurlander is a 4th-year PhD student at the University of Washington. He is writing the asteroid discovery and measurement pipelines for the Rubin Observatory, which will begin the ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time at the end of this year. He is a Seattle native, loves board games, and works with the eSTEAM program to provide education to incarcerated children in Washington state.
After the talk, stick around for a planetarium show and, if the weather holds, a Star Party.
Registration required, open to the community and to BPAA Members.
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Free Admission, $10 suggested donation but any amount appreciated
If you can't attend in person, you may watch on Zoom:
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