LSST: A Sky Movie Maker

Purdue is an institutional member of the LSST collaboration. LSST is a proposed 8.4-meter, wide field survey telescope. It is designed to scan the sky roughly once every 3 days. Among the many important scientific objectives, its ability to construct a 3-d map of the universe will allow an accurate characterization of dark matter distribution, which could lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of dark energy. In the recent decadal survey (Astro2010), LSST is ranked #1 among all ground-based astronomical facilities proposed for the next decade.