SBU Physics and Astronomy Faculty and Students Prepare to Measure the Universe
Newly Constructed Rubin Observatory in Chile Readying 10-year Ultra-Wide, Ultra-Deep Movie of the Sky
Stony Brook University professors — along with post-doctoral, graduate and undergraduate students — from the Department of Physics and Astronomy are preparing to measure the Universe with the newly constructed National Science Foundation (NSF)-Department of Energy (DOE) Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
Located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón in the Andes Mountains in Chile, the Rubin Observatory revealed the first set of large, ultra-high-definition images and videos on June 23, showcasing its extraordinary capabilities to the world for the first time at a “First Look Event” in Washington, D.C. Stony Brook researchers celebrated with their colleagues worldwide by hosting a “First Look Watch Party.”
The Rubin Observatory looks to capture the cosmos in detail by using the largest camera ever built and will repeatedly scan the sky for 10 years to create the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the night sky. The science goals for LSST range from exploring the transient Universe, to mapping the Solar System as well as the Milky Way galaxy, and cosmology, i.e. figuring out what the Universe is made of.
Stony Brook’s main involvement in Rubin is in cosmology. Rubin’s LSST will enable precision measurements of the geometry and structure of the Universe in order to study the properties of dark matter and dark energy, the two mysterious components that together make up 95 percent of the Universe, but whose nature remains unknown. Stony Brook researchers are part of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC), one of the largest collaborations in astronomy in the world with more than 1,200 members, as well as of the LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration (SLSC).
“The known part of our Universe comprises only ~5% of the Universe,” said Chang Kee Jung, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences. “The other part is composed of ‘Dark Energy’ and ‘Dark Matter,’ which we still know little about. The newly constructed Rubin Observatory will provide unprecedented data that will help us to greatly advance our understanding of the Universe. As a particle physicist myself, I have a keen interest in this magnificent telescope, not only for its fundamental science goals but also for its technology and participation of a large number of particle physicists in the project. The Stony Brook faculty members, postdocs and students have made significant contributions to the project. I am eager to see the stunning initial images and looking forward to seeing breakthrough findings from this interdisciplinary and mega-science project.”
Stony Brook Associate Professor Anja von der Linden has been a member of the DESC since its inception in 2012 and currently serves on the DESC management team as deputy technical coordinator. The main interest of Professor von der Linden and her research team is cosmology with galaxy clusters, the largest objects in the Universe, and weak gravitational lensing. Beyond the DESC, she serves on the Rubin Users Committee and is part of the Rubin commissioning team.
“Rubin Observatory can image the entire southern night sky in only three nights and will do so over and over again for 10 years,” said Professor von der Linden. “It will capture a 10-year movie of the southern sky, and in the process also acquire the widest, deepest sky image ever taken. Producing 20 terabytes of data per night and issuing 10 million alerts that something changed or moved, per night, it is the next Big Data project for astronomy. This vast amount of data will help astronomers uncover some of the Universe’s biggest secrets.”
Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty also working with the observatory includes Assistant Professor Simon Birrer, who is the current co-chair of the SLSC, one of eight science collaborations; Assistant Professor Vivian Miranda, who is a former DESC pipeline scientist and remains active in the DESC to search for signatures of dark energy; and Associate Professor Neelima Sehgal, who is interested in combining the Rubin Observatory findings with cosmic microwave background experiments.
“The Rubin Observatory will be a game changer for strong lensing science,” said Birrer. “We expect to find hundred times more gravitational lenses to shed light on dark matter and dark energy. The strong lensing community will need to grow their collaborative efforts. With Rubin, we can’t do the research alone. Organizing larger research teams will be a shift for the strong lensing community but it’s exciting because together we can do something really substantial.”
The Stony Brook team includes many early-career researchers including post-doctoral scholar Narayan Khadka, who serves as a DESC pipeline scientist and will soon move to Chile as a Rubin observing specialist. Graduate students Radhakrishnan Srinvasan, Prakruth Adari, Benjamin C. Levine, Xiangyu Huang and Paras Sharma are preparing for cosmology analyses with LSST data, and a number of undergraduate students, Sheina Peralta, Mia LaMontagne, Sofia Castillo, Yixuan Shao, Emrecan Sonmez, Xianzhe Tang and Carly Mistick, are gaining their first research experience with related data.
Moreover, a number of Stony Brook graduates are part of the Rubin world. Among them, former Stony Brook graduate student Dr. Shuang Liang is now a Rubin observing specialist, working in Chile at the forefront of acquiring the LSST data. Bryan Field, who received his PhD from the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, is now a program manager in the Department of Energy for the Cosmic Frontier program, of which the Rubin Observatory is part.