The University of La Serena hosted the fourth meeting of the Chilean astronomical community around the LSST telescope, the most important astronomical project in recent times, which included international guests.

El telescope LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) is unique in the world and is undoubtedly one of the largest and most important astronomical observation projects of recent times. Located on Cerro Pachón, about 100 km from the city of La Serena, its construction comes to strengthen our region as a world astronomical pole. The objective of this mega project is to collect astronomical observation data from every part of the sky visible from our region every 3 days for 10 years, which will produce 500 petabytes of images and data that will teach us about potentially dangerous objects in the Solar System. Earth to about the structure and evolution of the universe.

Specific research areas of this project include the study of dark matter and dark energy; the remote solar system and asteroids that may pose a danger to Earth; the transitory optical sky; and the formation and structure of the Milky Way.

"LSST is going to revolutionize the way astronomy is done (...) We are going to find a lot of objects that we have no idea exist (...), because we are covering a large part of the sky with a very high frequency," explained the Dr. in Astronomy, Guillermo Damke, researcher at the University of La Serena and who organized the IV Workshop of the LSST Chile “Towards Science in Chile with the LSST".


The meeting lasted for four days and brought together the most important scientists linked to the project at a national and international level, who, together with the university community, participated in various activities such as general and technical talks, discussion tables, workshops on computational tools for LSST data management and a visit to the LSST facilities in Cerro Pachón. Among the 10 international exhibitors, the presence of the director of the LSST, Dr. Steve Kahn, stood out, who gave a magisterial talk in which he updated on the latest advances in the start-up of the telescope.

It is estimated that the LSST will annually produce a catalog of 37 billion objects and 30 trillion measurements. "What is relevant for the region is that all this data produced here is going to have to be sent abroad so that it can be processed, a very high amount of data, therefore we need new techniques to be able to process that data," said the astronomer. .

This represents a huge challenge for the management and distribution of the data that will be produced. “That high-speed data highway (GATHER) is already built and the interesting thing is that Chilean astronomers will also have access to this data because it is the host country”, he added.

This project, which is estimated to be fully operational for scientific research in 2023, also brings to our region and country many associated projects in the field of scientific communication and education. These include programs for the general public; educators; planetariums and informal science centers; and citizen science. In this area, the educational prototype Painting the Universe stands out, which allows examining astronomical images in different filters, and the Space Warps citizen science project, in which citizens can classify galaxies visually.

Written by Yaritza Mondaca, Digital Campus, and Marcela Gatica, Faculty of Sciences