How did the Milky Way form? What is dark energy? Are there near-Earth asteroids that may threaten our planet? These and many other questions will be studied by astronomers working with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), scheduled to begin operating in 2019.

Kirk Borne, associate professor of astrophysics and computational sciences in the newly formed School of Physics,Astronomy, and Computational Sciences (SPACS), which becomes fully operational effective July 1, 2011, explains that George Mason University was chosen from a select few institutions around the world to participate in the LSST project.

Borne, along with Michael Summers (director of SPACS), wrote a successful proposal to the LSST Board of Directors. “We described Mason’s scientists’ capabilities, scientific interests, research experiences, and potential contributions to the LSST project.” After selecting Mason and one other new member, the LSST project declared a moratorium on adding more members.

The LSST will provide the world’s first full-color movie of our universe, an astronomical survey of the skies as seen from the Cerro Pachón ridge in Chile that will enable unique and powerful studies of objects that move or change in brightness.The project has three major components: the telescope to be built in Chile, the camera being built at Stanford University, and the data management system being developed across the country and led by the LSST team in Tucson, Arizona.The LSST represents a thousand-fold increase in capability over current facilities, and billions of objects in our universe will be seen for the first time. Possible explorations range from exploding massive stars in the distant universe to dark matter and dark energy, which are crucial to understanding the fundamental forces and building blocks of nature.

With the world’s largest digital camera (3.2 billion pix- els) capturing images through an 8.4-meter telescope, the LSST promises to gather 30 terabytes of data each night. Astronomers will use artificial intelligence to help analyze the enormous data sets.The data management system will organize the massive database—a total of 100 petabytes over the ten-year life of the project—into easily accessible catalogs of data.The LSST project is to be open source, and the information will be available to anyone.

Borne has been instrumental in developing an entirely new branch of astronomy, astroinformatics, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze and process data in astronomy research and education.As an originator of astroinformatics, Borne gives dozens of public lectures at conferences and universities on the subject, putting Mason on the map in this new field of research. Because the LSST project was ranked as a top priority for the next decade by the National Academy of Sciences, it has high visibility among government officials, policy makers, and other scientific institutions. Borne notes, “Everyone in the world knew about the Hubble Space Tele- scope project, and now LSST is on the verge of the same level of fame and popularity.”

Participating in the LSST project is truly a once-in-a-life- time research opportunity for Mason astronomy and physics faculty and students. Because Mason is an institutional part- ner, Mason scientists can easily join one of the eleven LSST teams that is helping with the design and planning of scien- tific research projects with the data. Outside scientists must write an entire proposal and go through the selection process, held once a year at most, with about a 50/50 chance of acceptance. “However,” Borne points out, “our scientists can send a couple of paragraphs to the team lead scientist, explaining who they are, what they will contribute, and why they can help the LSST project—and the chances of accept- ance are very high.”Students can work with faculty on these teams, which are starting research projects now in preparation for the LSST data.This multidisciplinary research, a very important facet of any scientist’s training, involves astronomy, data min- ing, computer science, statistics, applied math, and more. Once the telescope is operational in 2019, scientists and stu- dents can then use the massive LSST data catalogs to study projects involving variable stars, quasars, supernovae, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, near-Earth asteroids, galaxies, moving groups of stars, colliding galaxies—the list goes on.

Mason scientists will also research science data mining and management, studying new mathematical algorithms that can be used by any researcher in any discipline to discover hidden patterns in large databases and to assess data quality. Because they have been involved with the LSST project from its start, they can become familiar with the tools, access mechanisms, research analysis programs, and the data itself— all skills and knowledge that will help them “hit the ground running,” says Borne, “and get rapid early science results from the LSST data.When LSST goes online, we’ll have immediate access to everything on the first day of operations.”

The LSST education team, of which Borne is a member, is developing programs for formal education at the K–12 and undergraduate levels; informal education for museums, plane- taria, and science centers; citizen science (online research by the general public using the LSST database); and outreach to the general public through web portals, iPhone apps, and more.Thus Mason faculty and students can get involved ina range of opportunities: astronomical research, data mining research, and educational program development.Mason’s participation in the LSST project will increase its reputation as a world leader in astroinformatics.The current and future contributions that Mason researchers are making to the LSST project exemplify the College of Science’s mission to provide world-class scientific leadership.