Speaker: Theo Schutt

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a high mountaintop in Chile, is equipped with an 8.4-meter primary mirror and the largest digital camera in the world, the LSST Camera. Rubin Observatory will soon begin an unprecedented 10-year survey that will repeatedly scan the entire Southern sky every three to four nights. This 10-year color “movie” of the cosmos will help unravel the mysteries of a broad swath of astronomy and cosmology, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, galaxy formation and evolution, exoplanets and our own Solar System. In this talk, I will introduce Rubin Observatory and its broad science goals and highlight one of the earliest astronomical results produced by the Rubin team: observations of the third known interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS. I will also share my exciting experience of working hands-on at Rubin Observatory in Chile for three months this past year getting LSST Camera ready for its big survey debut.

Theo Schutt is a sixth-year PhD student at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Lab, and a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC).  Theo is an observational cosmologist specializing in weak gravitational lensing, the study of how light from very distant galaxies gets deflected by foreground clumps of matter. Their work focuses on analyzing data from the Dark Energy Survey, mapping the lensing of nearly 150 million galaxies to better understand dark energy, the mysterious source driving the accelerated expansion of our Universe. In particular, Theo has worked to improve the methods for disentangling atmospheric and sensor effects from the true cosmological signal. Theo is also involved in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, having contributed to the characterization and commissioning of the main instrument, LSST Camera, at SLAC and in Chile.

We propose a mission concept for a space observatory with a large-aperture (50-meter) unsegmented primary mirror suitable for a variety of astronomical applications. The mirror would be created in space via a novel approach based on fluidic shaping in microgravity, which has already been successfully demonstrated in a laboratory neutral buoyancy environment, in parabolic microgravity flights, and aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Theoretically scale-invariant, this technique has produced optical components with superb, sub-nanometer (RMS) surface quality. 

The San Mateo County Astronomical Society Star Parties, Speaker Series, and meetings are free and open to the public. Free parking in nearby lighted parking lots, easy access to the Planetarium. Speaker Series and meetings happen in person at the College of San Mateo Planetarium. General meetings and socials start at 7:00 pm in Room 110 in the ISC Building (36). Speaker presentations start at 8:00 pm in the Planetarium​​. Although generally not a problem in CSM’s state-of-the-art, 98 seat Planetarium, please reserve a free ticket through EventBrite here, and plan to arrive early to assure entry, as seats are first-come, first-served, not reserved. Please note that all guests must be seated and there will be no standing allowed due to safety concerns, access into the Planetarium is stopped once the seats are full.