when I was old as many of you I wanted
to be an astronomer I was fascinated by
the night sky everything from planets to
distant stars to nearby galaxies caught
my attention and with a little help from
my parents I saved up some money and
bought a telescope I wanted to know how
the telescope worked and in study
astronomy and really understand how the
science of astronomy was done and that
modern telescope that I purchased 20
years ago now the design has been around
for about 400 years and during that time
astronomy the science of astronomy has
done more or less the same way now it’s
changed a bit in the last few decades
and we’ll talk about why that is but
typically astronomers from colleges and
universities all across the country in
the world but travel to places like Kitt
Peak National Observatory just outside
Tucson Arizona pictured behind me and
there’s many wonderful telescopes of
different sizes that dot the summit of
this mountain and astronomers would get
in their planes and travel off and have
a dozens of targets that they’ve
carefully selected it obtain that data
and travel home making sure to keep that
precious precious data safe and what’s
changed in the last few decades
basically since I started studying
astronomy is that there’s been a new
form of observing that has really taken
hold across the community and it’s one
that has really revolutionized how the
science of astronomy is done and it
doesn’t require going to a mountain and
in fact all you need is an internet
connection and a laptop and you can get
your hands on some of the best the most
exquisite data ever obtained now this
data has been obtained by digital sky
surveys these are the surveys that are
fueling this revolution in observing and
there are two particularly important
surveys that will continue to fuel this
revolution over the next two decades now
in the 1990s two important surveys led
the way the first was the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey which was based out of New
Mexico
and the two micron all-sky survey which
had telescopes in Arizona and Chile now
these surveys were run in a in a
scanning fashion every each and every
night they would go out and take as many
images as possible not specifically
focused on a given target and they would
obtain digital pictures of the night sky
and usually over many different filters
so they were using different colors to
to examine the night sky now
after running for many many years these
two surveys delivered a precise eep and
wide field view of our universe now my
own particular research interest is of
the Milky Way I’m interested in our home
galaxy and how its structured and how
it’s changed over time and because these
particular surveys have such a wide
field of view they are ideal for
studying our Milky Way
now if you were to drive far away from
here far away from any city lights and
look up tonight you would see the Milky
Way stretched overhead you would see
thousands and thousands of stars
crisscross by dust lions and it’s in
that that plane of the Milky Way where
we see many of the stars of our galaxy
and if we could peer deep into those
dust lanes we actually would see star
forming regions
it’s where new stars are being born now
the the what the reason for studying the
structure of our galaxy is because we
want to understand how much mass is out
there how many stars are there what’s
between the stars and by studying the
structure of the galaxy you can tell us
something about that it can also tell us
something about how much dark matter is
out there it’s a substance that only
interacts through gravity that we don’t
actually know quite what it is just yet
now while in graduate school I compiled
a list from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
of 30 million star
I measure their positions their
distances and their masses and by
analyzing this data I was able to
produce the map that you see on the
screen behind me that map is was at the
time one of the most precise maps of our
galaxy ever constructed
it had unprecedented precision in terms
of understanding just how many stars are
out there and where we can find them now
this particular map is is one that
really relied on the strengths of
digital sky surveys one of the beautiful
aspects of these surveys is that within
the same images we get many different
stars and galaxies of different
properties now to create this map I used
stars that are a little smaller than the
Sun they’re a little dimmer they’re a
little cooler they’re a little redder
but there are many of them out there and
if we map out where these millions and
millions of low mass stars can be found
we can construct this map of the Milky
Way and what it’s telling us is that if
we go above or below the plane of the
galaxy pictured behind the the map there
that we find fewer and fewer stars and
that if we were to row them away from
the galactic center we would also see a
gradual decline as we made that trek now
these stars can be seen for a few
thousand light years and I should say
that it is the the power of digital
surveys that really allowed this to
happen right it still took me a few
years to make those maps but if I were
to try to make the same map using
traditional observing modes it would
take many many lifetimes now within the
same set of data we can see stars that
are intrinsically much much much
brighter than these dim low mass stars
and that is interesting because there
are millions of times brighter than the
Sun and can be seen at many at much much
larger distances they probe something
that we call the Galactic halo this kind
of spherical veil of stars that has
little bits and pieces of of what’s left
over after the start of
Galaxy and some of the most fascinating
structure that’s been found during the
last two decades is highlighted behind
me here in blue there’s a stream of
stars and this is the the remnants of a
former galaxy that was actually pulled
apart by the Milky Way’s extreme
gravitational pull and we see these
stars wrapped around our Milky Way in
almost all different directions on the
sky and the red stars are intrinsically
very very bright these are millions of
times brighter than the Sun and we can
see them up to almost 1 million
light-years away and we’ve found these
things they’re just barely holding on to
our galaxies but they are in part they
are part of our Milky Way now Digital
surveys have told us a lot about our
galaxy over the last two decades but
that’s not the end of the story in 2013
ESO the European Space Agency launched
Gaia and Gaia is the first of two
important surveys that are going to
change how the future of astronomy is
laid out guy is designed to study our
Milky Way it is two telescopes it’s
about 15 feet across and it’s tumbling
in space looking in two different
directions at the same time it’s
measuring properties of stars how bright
they are
how what color light they’re producing
but most importantly guy is designed to
measure distances stars actually produce
tiny little shifts in their position
over time and those tiny little shifts
which are very small they’re equal to if
you put a quarter on the moon that’s the
kind of shift that you’re looking for
those little shifts allow us with a
little bit of geometry to measure the
distances to stars without any
assumptions you’re only using math
you’re only using a sign which is a
beautiful thing and so Gaia has been
mapping the night sky for the last five
years now in 2016 they produced their
first public data release the Stata
release was over the entire sky and
contained distances to about 2 million
stars now it’s easy to see the plane of
the Milky Way stretched across this all
sky view you can see the dust lanes that
are piercing through that plane and
below the plane of the Milky Way are two
neighboring galaxies the large and small
Magellanic Clouds which unfortunately
for us here in this room are only really
seen from the southern hemisphere but
what you can also notice with this image
is that there are some artifacts in play
that there’s leftovers from the scanning
motions of the satellite that aren’t
quite filled in and this was the first
data release it was clear that we needed
more data and the the satellite has been
obtaining that data over the last few
years and just in April of this year
Gaia produced their second data release
and this without any exaggeration it is
going to be impacting my career and the
careers of thousands of astronomers for
decades to come
there is not a map or an atlas of our
galaxy that is going to surpass this
anytime soon there are over 1.3 billion
stars that are making up this image
behind me this map of the Milky Way is
the most precise map that we’ve ever had
and you can see those dust lanes passing
through and the the beautiful structure
of our Milky Way galaxy in addition to
measuring distances Gaia’s also
measuring colors of stars and so we can
overlay that color information because
the colors of stars tell us a little bit
about their properties it tells us how
massive they are how old they are and so
red and yellow stars that we see in the
center of the the Milky Way here
indicate an older stellar population
these are stars that are billions and
billions of years old the bluish haze
that you see in the the plane of the the
Milky Way there is from young stars
stars that only are going to last a few
million years before they run out of
fuel now this particular data release is
entirely public everyone in this room
and everyone that watches this video can
go with
guys website and download all this data
today anyone in the world can access
this data and while Gaia will
revolutionize our understanding of the
Milky Way this is not the only major
survey that’s going to change the way
astronomy is done the other beautiful
aspect of the Gaia data is that not only
does it tell us about the distances and
properties of billions of billions of
stars it also tells us a little bit
about our own star the Sun so I call
this the the star trek graph you’re
looking at the average motions of stars
across the entire sky and our Sun is
headed off in a direction to the left
there and so as we head off in that
direction just like you would in Star
Trek there are a little spaceship we see
stars passing by us and if we look in
the direction that we’re leaving we see
stars kind of heading in that direction
so this is telling us something about
the galaxy it’s also telling us
something about our own star
now while Gaia is going to change the
game in terms of Milky Way studies the
large synoptic survey telescope or LSST
will also have a huge impact on the
future of astronomy this is an
international project led by hundreds of
astronomers and computer scientists and
engineers all over the world
it’s currently being constructed in
Sierra patrone Chile and when it’s
complete it’ll have an 8 meter mirror in
diameter which is about the size of the
stage it is going to use this wide field
of view to peer into the night sky each
and every night snapping an image about
twice a minute it’s going to use six
different filters to get a color image
of that night sky and the camera that’s
being constructed is one of is the
largest ever built this camera is is
going to hang above the primary mirror
and record all the light that falls onto
that mirror now the the wide field of
view that’s being produced by the
telescope is
being imaged by the largest digital
camera ever constructed this camera
shown here at full size all those pixels
being held by by our scientists there
will peer into the night sky with an
area of about three and a half degrees
to put that in terms that you probably
are a little more familiar with that’s
about seven times the width of the full
moon every time in LSST image is taken
right twice a minute there’s gonna be
hundreds of thousands of stars and
galaxies within that particular image in
order to view one single image at its
native resolution you would need
something like 360 4k TV sets this is
going to be some of the most beautiful
images ever obtained by astronomers now
it’s going to image the entire night sky
it’ll take about three nights to to
basically reproduce one of those surveys
from the 90s and it’s going to do that
process for ten years so we’re gonna
have the first High Definition movie of
the universe ever a cameras as you can
imagine not going to fit in your pocket
even though it’s the same technology a
camera is gonna be about the size of a
small car it’s gonna weigh about two
tons and will continue to produce those
large images twice a minute
essentially every night for 10 years now
what are we going to do with this
imagery and why do we need your help
well one of the things that we’ve
learned from digital surveys in the past
is that citizen science has played an
extremely important role in
understanding the data right we’re gonna
have petabytes thousands and thousands
of terabytes worth of imaging data that
will be served up publicly they’re going
to allow citizen scientists all over the
world classrooms all over the world to
study these images to to explore the
mysteries of the universe along with us
and for the first time in essentially an
astronomical history a major observatory
is going to be producing publicly
available data nightly you can get
alerts on your phones if you
favorite star decides to to blink a
little bit and so that is going to
really kind of change how the public and
astronomers interact with this data
again all you’ll need is an internet
connection and you can have your hands
on some of the most exquisite data ever
obtained construction is currently
underway and when it’s completed in a
few years it should look something like
this we’re on schedule and from a sneak
peak earlier this year things are
progressing nicely
the mirrors is nearly complete and we’re
seeing integration of all the parts
starting to happen and so when we’re
done what will we have well we’ll have
the the best image of the night sky ever
obtained we’re going to see about a
little over half of the sky because you
can’t see through the earth
unfortunately but there’s about 60
petabytes worth of data that are going
to go into the imaging catalogs at the
end of the survey it’s going to require
millions and millions of TVs of 4k TVs
to to view all those pixels perhaps more
importantly this is going to be a movie
of the universe we’re going to be
snapping pictures of the sky every three
nights for 10 years for the first time
we’re really going to unlock the window
of time on the universe and when we do
that and produce this movie of the
universe it’s going to be a must-see I
don’t know if we’re gonna win Oscars but
it’s you’re gonna want to see it will
have asteroids Criss crossing the solar
system will see distant stars wandering
through the galaxy and will see
thousands of supernovae exploding
millions of light years away in
different galaxies and for the first
time in history we are going to have an
astronomical catalog that Dwarfs the
number of people on this planet
something like 40 billion stars and
galaxies will be mapped by this
telescope and we are going to serve that
data up publicly right so everybody in
world can have their hands on this data
the the future of astronomy is one that
is open and public and ready for the
next generation of scientists to explore thank you
to be an astronomer I was fascinated by
the night sky everything from planets to
distant stars to nearby galaxies caught
my attention and with a little help from
my parents I saved up some money and
bought a telescope I wanted to know how
the telescope worked and in study
astronomy and really understand how the
science of astronomy was done and that
modern telescope that I purchased 20
years ago now the design has been around
for about 400 years and during that time
astronomy the science of astronomy has
done more or less the same way now it’s
changed a bit in the last few decades
and we’ll talk about why that is but
typically astronomers from colleges and
universities all across the country in
the world but travel to places like Kitt
Peak National Observatory just outside
Tucson Arizona pictured behind me and
there’s many wonderful telescopes of
different sizes that dot the summit of
this mountain and astronomers would get
in their planes and travel off and have
a dozens of targets that they’ve
carefully selected it obtain that data
and travel home making sure to keep that
precious precious data safe and what’s
changed in the last few decades
basically since I started studying
astronomy is that there’s been a new
form of observing that has really taken
hold across the community and it’s one
that has really revolutionized how the
science of astronomy is done and it
doesn’t require going to a mountain and
in fact all you need is an internet
connection and a laptop and you can get
your hands on some of the best the most
exquisite data ever obtained now this
data has been obtained by digital sky
surveys these are the surveys that are
fueling this revolution in observing and
there are two particularly important
surveys that will continue to fuel this
revolution over the next two decades now
in the 1990s two important surveys led
the way the first was the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey which was based out of New
Mexico
and the two micron all-sky survey which
had telescopes in Arizona and Chile now
these surveys were run in a in a
scanning fashion every each and every
night they would go out and take as many
images as possible not specifically
focused on a given target and they would
obtain digital pictures of the night sky
and usually over many different filters
so they were using different colors to
to examine the night sky now
after running for many many years these
two surveys delivered a precise eep and
wide field view of our universe now my
own particular research interest is of
the Milky Way I’m interested in our home
galaxy and how its structured and how
it’s changed over time and because these
particular surveys have such a wide
field of view they are ideal for
studying our Milky Way
now if you were to drive far away from
here far away from any city lights and
look up tonight you would see the Milky
Way stretched overhead you would see
thousands and thousands of stars
crisscross by dust lions and it’s in
that that plane of the Milky Way where
we see many of the stars of our galaxy
and if we could peer deep into those
dust lanes we actually would see star
forming regions
it’s where new stars are being born now
the the what the reason for studying the
structure of our galaxy is because we
want to understand how much mass is out
there how many stars are there what’s
between the stars and by studying the
structure of the galaxy you can tell us
something about that it can also tell us
something about how much dark matter is
out there it’s a substance that only
interacts through gravity that we don’t
actually know quite what it is just yet
now while in graduate school I compiled
a list from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
of 30 million star
I measure their positions their
distances and their masses and by
analyzing this data I was able to
produce the map that you see on the
screen behind me that map is was at the
time one of the most precise maps of our
galaxy ever constructed
it had unprecedented precision in terms
of understanding just how many stars are
out there and where we can find them now
this particular map is is one that
really relied on the strengths of
digital sky surveys one of the beautiful
aspects of these surveys is that within
the same images we get many different
stars and galaxies of different
properties now to create this map I used
stars that are a little smaller than the
Sun they’re a little dimmer they’re a
little cooler they’re a little redder
but there are many of them out there and
if we map out where these millions and
millions of low mass stars can be found
we can construct this map of the Milky
Way and what it’s telling us is that if
we go above or below the plane of the
galaxy pictured behind the the map there
that we find fewer and fewer stars and
that if we were to row them away from
the galactic center we would also see a
gradual decline as we made that trek now
these stars can be seen for a few
thousand light years and I should say
that it is the the power of digital
surveys that really allowed this to
happen right it still took me a few
years to make those maps but if I were
to try to make the same map using
traditional observing modes it would
take many many lifetimes now within the
same set of data we can see stars that
are intrinsically much much much
brighter than these dim low mass stars
and that is interesting because there
are millions of times brighter than the
Sun and can be seen at many at much much
larger distances they probe something
that we call the Galactic halo this kind
of spherical veil of stars that has
little bits and pieces of of what’s left
over after the start of
Galaxy and some of the most fascinating
structure that’s been found during the
last two decades is highlighted behind
me here in blue there’s a stream of
stars and this is the the remnants of a
former galaxy that was actually pulled
apart by the Milky Way’s extreme
gravitational pull and we see these
stars wrapped around our Milky Way in
almost all different directions on the
sky and the red stars are intrinsically
very very bright these are millions of
times brighter than the Sun and we can
see them up to almost 1 million
light-years away and we’ve found these
things they’re just barely holding on to
our galaxies but they are in part they
are part of our Milky Way now Digital
surveys have told us a lot about our
galaxy over the last two decades but
that’s not the end of the story in 2013
ESO the European Space Agency launched
Gaia and Gaia is the first of two
important surveys that are going to
change how the future of astronomy is
laid out guy is designed to study our
Milky Way it is two telescopes it’s
about 15 feet across and it’s tumbling
in space looking in two different
directions at the same time it’s
measuring properties of stars how bright
they are
how what color light they’re producing
but most importantly guy is designed to
measure distances stars actually produce
tiny little shifts in their position
over time and those tiny little shifts
which are very small they’re equal to if
you put a quarter on the moon that’s the
kind of shift that you’re looking for
those little shifts allow us with a
little bit of geometry to measure the
distances to stars without any
assumptions you’re only using math
you’re only using a sign which is a
beautiful thing and so Gaia has been
mapping the night sky for the last five
years now in 2016 they produced their
first public data release the Stata
release was over the entire sky and
contained distances to about 2 million
stars now it’s easy to see the plane of
the Milky Way stretched across this all
sky view you can see the dust lanes that
are piercing through that plane and
below the plane of the Milky Way are two
neighboring galaxies the large and small
Magellanic Clouds which unfortunately
for us here in this room are only really
seen from the southern hemisphere but
what you can also notice with this image
is that there are some artifacts in play
that there’s leftovers from the scanning
motions of the satellite that aren’t
quite filled in and this was the first
data release it was clear that we needed
more data and the the satellite has been
obtaining that data over the last few
years and just in April of this year
Gaia produced their second data release
and this without any exaggeration it is
going to be impacting my career and the
careers of thousands of astronomers for
decades to come
there is not a map or an atlas of our
galaxy that is going to surpass this
anytime soon there are over 1.3 billion
stars that are making up this image
behind me this map of the Milky Way is
the most precise map that we’ve ever had
and you can see those dust lanes passing
through and the the beautiful structure
of our Milky Way galaxy in addition to
measuring distances Gaia’s also
measuring colors of stars and so we can
overlay that color information because
the colors of stars tell us a little bit
about their properties it tells us how
massive they are how old they are and so
red and yellow stars that we see in the
center of the the Milky Way here
indicate an older stellar population
these are stars that are billions and
billions of years old the bluish haze
that you see in the the plane of the the
Milky Way there is from young stars
stars that only are going to last a few
million years before they run out of
fuel now this particular data release is
entirely public everyone in this room
and everyone that watches this video can
go with
guys website and download all this data
today anyone in the world can access
this data and while Gaia will
revolutionize our understanding of the
Milky Way this is not the only major
survey that’s going to change the way
astronomy is done the other beautiful
aspect of the Gaia data is that not only
does it tell us about the distances and
properties of billions of billions of
stars it also tells us a little bit
about our own star the Sun so I call
this the the star trek graph you’re
looking at the average motions of stars
across the entire sky and our Sun is
headed off in a direction to the left
there and so as we head off in that
direction just like you would in Star
Trek there are a little spaceship we see
stars passing by us and if we look in
the direction that we’re leaving we see
stars kind of heading in that direction
so this is telling us something about
the galaxy it’s also telling us
something about our own star
now while Gaia is going to change the
game in terms of Milky Way studies the
large synoptic survey telescope or LSST
will also have a huge impact on the
future of astronomy this is an
international project led by hundreds of
astronomers and computer scientists and
engineers all over the world
it’s currently being constructed in
Sierra patrone Chile and when it’s
complete it’ll have an 8 meter mirror in
diameter which is about the size of the
stage it is going to use this wide field
of view to peer into the night sky each
and every night snapping an image about
twice a minute it’s going to use six
different filters to get a color image
of that night sky and the camera that’s
being constructed is one of is the
largest ever built this camera is is
going to hang above the primary mirror
and record all the light that falls onto
that mirror now the the wide field of
view that’s being produced by the
telescope is
being imaged by the largest digital
camera ever constructed this camera
shown here at full size all those pixels
being held by by our scientists there
will peer into the night sky with an
area of about three and a half degrees
to put that in terms that you probably
are a little more familiar with that’s
about seven times the width of the full
moon every time in LSST image is taken
right twice a minute there’s gonna be
hundreds of thousands of stars and
galaxies within that particular image in
order to view one single image at its
native resolution you would need
something like 360 4k TV sets this is
going to be some of the most beautiful
images ever obtained by astronomers now
it’s going to image the entire night sky
it’ll take about three nights to to
basically reproduce one of those surveys
from the 90s and it’s going to do that
process for ten years so we’re gonna
have the first High Definition movie of
the universe ever a cameras as you can
imagine not going to fit in your pocket
even though it’s the same technology a
camera is gonna be about the size of a
small car it’s gonna weigh about two
tons and will continue to produce those
large images twice a minute
essentially every night for 10 years now
what are we going to do with this
imagery and why do we need your help
well one of the things that we’ve
learned from digital surveys in the past
is that citizen science has played an
extremely important role in
understanding the data right we’re gonna
have petabytes thousands and thousands
of terabytes worth of imaging data that
will be served up publicly they’re going
to allow citizen scientists all over the
world classrooms all over the world to
study these images to to explore the
mysteries of the universe along with us
and for the first time in essentially an
astronomical history a major observatory
is going to be producing publicly
available data nightly you can get
alerts on your phones if you
favorite star decides to to blink a
little bit and so that is going to
really kind of change how the public and
astronomers interact with this data
again all you’ll need is an internet
connection and you can have your hands
on some of the most exquisite data ever
obtained construction is currently
underway and when it’s completed in a
few years it should look something like
this we’re on schedule and from a sneak
peak earlier this year things are
progressing nicely
the mirrors is nearly complete and we’re
seeing integration of all the parts
starting to happen and so when we’re
done what will we have well we’ll have
the the best image of the night sky ever
obtained we’re going to see about a
little over half of the sky because you
can’t see through the earth
unfortunately but there’s about 60
petabytes worth of data that are going
to go into the imaging catalogs at the
end of the survey it’s going to require
millions and millions of TVs of 4k TVs
to to view all those pixels perhaps more
importantly this is going to be a movie
of the universe we’re going to be
snapping pictures of the sky every three
nights for 10 years for the first time
we’re really going to unlock the window
of time on the universe and when we do
that and produce this movie of the
universe it’s going to be a must-see I
don’t know if we’re gonna win Oscars but
it’s you’re gonna want to see it will
have asteroids Criss crossing the solar
system will see distant stars wandering
through the galaxy and will see
thousands of supernovae exploding
millions of light years away in
different galaxies and for the first
time in history we are going to have an
astronomical catalog that Dwarfs the
number of people on this planet
something like 40 billion stars and
galaxies will be mapped by this
telescope and we are going to serve that
data up publicly right so everybody in
world can have their hands on this data
the the future of astronomy is one that
is open and public and ready for the
next generation of scientists to explore thank you
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