[Interview+] Vera Rubin Will Change Astronomy Forever. Here's Exactly How
Vera Rubin Telescope (aka LSST) is finally ready. We're expecting first light in the coming months. It will find Planet 9 (if it exists), discover thousands of new asteroids, millions of new supernovae and will change the way we do astronomy with its surveys of the night sky. Here's how it will do all that.
🟣 Guest: Dr. Edward Ajhar https://rubinobservatory.org/
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FIJLCwtnKKI
Comments (17)
Five minutes until someone announces “the discovery of Planet 9” but it won’t be along the lines of the “Planet 9” postulated by Brown and Batygin — I don’t think that is out there
They've partnered with a place called Zooniverse to engage the public. If people get to participate, they're more likely to care. AND there's more science going on, so it's a win-win. The minigame from Borderlands 3 that was just supposed to be a proof of concept but made actual discoveries comes to mind when thinking how hungry for this stuff we are. Someone from Zooniverse would make a good interview, I bet.
Related question for some Q&A: Would Planet X/Planet 9 object qualify to be a planet if found in expected range of mass and trajectory parameters? I ask this because I remember seeing properly published/peer reviewed paper within a year of the new planetary definition (sorry, long time ago, can't find it, don't remember reference) showing how mass and distance relate to ability of an object to clear its orbit and be a planet. If I remember numbers correctly, Earth size object would cease to be a planet beyond approximately 100AU and Jupiter sized object beyond about 300AU. Expected size and trajectory of Planet X would hence imply that it only can be a dwarf planet (or as I'd name it, oxymoron planet, Giant Dwarf Planet).
Thank you for that insightful interview!
Planet IX within 30 days of start of operation.
186 days
planet 9 100 days after first light
Incredible interview, thank you. Planet 9 is interesting but I’m so much more pumped to hear about findings that we don’t expect - something new entirely. I hope it generates more questions than it answers.
42 days. Loved the interview, but I can not believe it said "Vera Robin Observatory" at the bottom throughout.
Most likely it was entered correctly but some “helpful” software autocorrected it and it wasn’t noticed. I am fed up with supposedly helpful software sticking its proverbial fingers in my own typing and messing things up. Artificial Intelligence indeed. Very artificial!
To b
I will definitively build a live supernova counter clock in my classroom for my students to visualize science going on ALL THE TIME. I strongly agree with your opinion that there's a lot of untapped potential to engage science citizens.
I was looking forward to this interview almost as much as for the first data coming in. Please don't shut up about Vera Rubin!
Excellent interview! Thank you, sir!
Nice video! Really enjoyed that one. :)
27 days
I, too, was in the Summer Science Program (SSP)! I went into math/stat, rather than astronomy.