Presentation 1 : Oral/Invited
The Deep Lens Survey as a Resource for Hands-On Universe
Dara J Norman and the DLS Team
The Deep Lens Survey is one of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories
(NOAO) Survey Programs. The project is headed by Tony Tyson of Bell Labs
and involved 22 investigators at 14 institutions in the US and Chile.
The survey will take ~4 years to complete and will be Ultra-deep
observations of seven 4 square degree fields in 4 colors.
The survey is being done with NOAO's Blanco 4m Telescope
in Chile and the Mayall 4m in Arizona.
The main goal of the survey is to search for large-scale dark matter
in the universe through a method that uses the gravitational lensing
of light from distant objects. However, to reach the faint magnitudes
needed to use this method,
we must observe each field several times. This means that objects that
vary either in position or brightness (called transients) are
found in these fields.
Thus, the DLS dataset is a great resource for educational programs,
including Hands On Universe.
I will describe the DLS survey, its goals and how it is used as
a resource for HOU.