Join us for our monthly meeting. All of our monthly meetings are free and open to the public.
Our guest will be joining us at SFU, so this lecture will be an in-person lecture.
Location: SFU Burnaby, room AQ3149
Topic: Searching for Nature's Magnifying Glass with the Euclid Space Telescope
Abstract: Strong gravitational lensing is one of the most incredible phenomena of nature, and a direct consequence of Einstein's general relativity. Not only does it help produce a magnified image of the background galaxy, but it is also a direct probe of the dark matter distribution of the foreground galaxy. Yet despite this potential, only a few thousand strong lenses have been discovered to date, constrained by the limited resolution and field of view of past telescopes. Euclid is set to change that. With its wide field of view and exceptionally fine resolution, it is expected to find over a hundred thousand new galaxy-galaxy strong lenses. This talk will introduce the idea of strong lensing and move on to explaining how the Euclid Strong Lensing Science Working Group is using artificial intelligence to find them, before getting into my research on using a surprisingly simple mathematical tool to discover these objects, about 10 times faster than AI.
Speaker: Hrishabh Srivastava
Bio: Hrishabh Srivastava is a second-year MSc student in Astronomy and a member of the Euclid Strong Lensing Science Working Group. After beginning his academic journey in engineering and data science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he transitioned into astrophysics to pursue his long-standing interest in astronomy. His research focuses on identifying strong gravitational lenses in Euclid images to better understand the Universe. Outside of research, he enjoys hiking, reading historical philosophy, and communicating science to wider audiences
About our Events:
All RASC lectures and observing events are open to the public, family friendly, and there is no charge for admission. Our organization is run entirely by volunteers who love astronomy and astrophysics. Whether you're a complete beginner, a seasoned astronomer, or you hope to work for NASA some day, anyone fascinated by space exploration is welcome.
