LSST Sensors Pass Vision Tests

Morgan May and Yuki Okura

Brookhaven physicist Morgan May and Yuki Okura, a postdoctoral fellow from Japan's RIKEN laboratory stationed at the RIKEN-Brookhaven Research Center, holding Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) sensor components.

When you’re building a massive telescope designed to detect subtle shapes in the light emitted by distant galaxies, you’d like to know that the shapes you are seeing are accurate and not the result of defects in your telescope’s sensors. Fortunately sensors for the camera of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), expected to see “first light” from atop a mountain in Chile in 2020, just received very promising vision test results from physicists at Brookhaven Lab.

The LSST, originally known as the Dark Matter Telescope, will detect the distribution of dark matter throughout the cosmos. The telescope won’t see dark matter directly, but will detect its gravitational interaction with visible forms of matter, namely galaxies.

The LSST will look at billions of background galaxies and use gravitational lensing to map where the dark matter concentrations are and how much dark matter there is. By looking at galaxies at varying distances from Earth, the LSST collaboration will be able to explore how the distribution of dark matter (and the sprinkling of visible matter) has changed over time.

To learn more visit: www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=25610

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