SLAC Colloquium

Life and Science in an Absolute Monarchy

-
Location

SLAC, Kavli Auditorium

Speaker
Guy Consolmagno, SJ (Vatican Observatory) In Person and zoom

Zoom info: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/94405112201?pwd=TkZFdUZqRGFQSXJtMmFMcTA5aGxQQT09

What is the day-to-day life like in the Vatican? And how does that compare to the ways that such places are depicted in some of your favorite (and not-so-favorite) fantasy novels? What is it really like to live in a five hundred year-old palace, to work in an absolute monarchy, to do science in a structure far older than NASA?

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI) and Beyond

-
Location

SLAC, Building 048, Redwood Rooms A/B

Speaker
David Schlegel (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) In Person and zoom

Zoom info: zoom: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/97616103490?pwd=UUxPTEhUNlQ5U2N1UTllUkc4dURO…

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is mapping the sky with a 5000-fiber robotic focal plane and 10 optical spectrographs. I will describe the challenges in construction, installation, commissioning, operations, and data reduction. The 13 million galaxies mapped in the first year already promises to improve our understanding of cosmic expansion and dark energy.