BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:UW-Madison-Physics-Events BEGIN:VEVENT SEQUENCE:0 UID:UW-Physics-Event-4472 DTSTART:20170216T213000Z DTEND:20170216T230000Z DTSTAMP:20260419T043202Z LAST-MODIFIED:20170130T214008Z LOCATION:4421 Sterling Hall\, Coffee and cookies 3:30 PM\, Talk Begins 3:45 PM SUMMARY:Systematic Serendipity: Novel Discoveries in Astronomical Surv eys\, Astronomy Colloquium\, Lucianne Walkowicz\, Chicago Planetarium DESCRIPTION:As of last year\, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSS T) has begun construction on the summit of Cerro Pachon. As the top-ra ted flagship for ground-based astronomy in the next decade\, LSST will provide an unprecedented dataset of 37 billion objects observed in bo th space and time. The time domain aspect of LSST is an especially pro mising source of new discoveries: the main survey is expected to gener ate new samples of thousands of supernovae\, cataclysmic variables\, s tellar flares\, and regular variables\, amongst other denizens of the time-domain zoo\, each one of which will generate an "alert" within 60 seconds of observation. Sorting amongst these transient and variable objects poses a challenging task: transient events of interest must be identified and prioritized\, so that valuable follow-up resources (wh ich are easily saturated by the volume of LSST alerts per night) are d eployed on the events with the most potential to provide transformativ e understanding of particular phenomena. For LSST\, this task is of co urse at a beyond-human scale\, requiring sophisticated machine learnin g algorithms to provide real-time characterization and prioritization. However\, another challenge looms under the surface of the approachin g flood of data: how can truly novel phenomena be recognized and disco vered in large datasets? In this talk\, I will discuss methods and app lications of finding anomalous data in astronomical datasets. Anomaly identification is a powerful means to both discover novel phenomena\, as well as to identify problematic data so that it may be cleaned from the database. Lastly\, hunting down anomalies is an exciting way to e ngage citizen scientists in astronomical discovery\, whose efforts hav e repeatedly demonstrated the power of the crowd in uncovering previou sly-unnoticed phenomena.
\n URL:https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=4472 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR