Prague Relativistic Astrophysics

Steven M. Kahn

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a large-aperture, wide-field, ground-based telescope designed to provide deep images of half of the total sky in six optical colors every few nights. As such it will enable a wide variety of diverse astronomical investigations, ranging from making a census of small moving objects in the solar system, to mapping the outer regions of our Milky Way galaxy. Of particular interest for cosmology and fundamental physics, LSST will provide tight constraints on the nature of dark energy through a range of statistical analyses of the shapes and distributions of billions of galaxies out to moderate to high redshift. This project was recently ranked as the highest priority new ground-based astronomical facility by a committee of the US National Academy of Sciences. I will review the basic considerations that have led to the design of the LSST, and discuss a sampling of the exciting science opportunities that will be enabled by its construction.