SDSS-V Mapping the Hidden Universe

For more than 25 years, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has charted the night sky. Now, in its fifth generation, SDSS-V is building the most detailed map of the universe yet. That map stretches from the stars and gas in our own Milky Way to the supermassive black holes at the hearts of distant galaxies. Join SDSS astronomer Dr. Emily Griffith under the Fiske dome for a tour of SDSS-V and its three programs: Milky Way Mapper, Local Volume Mapper, and Black Hole Mapper. We will start our show on the Earth, where three uniquely designed telescopes in New Mexico and Chile capture millions of spectra — the “rainbows” or chemical fingerprints of light. We’ll then explore how these spectra reveal what stars, galaxies, and interstellar gas clouds are made of, how they form, and how they change over time. In this presentation, we’ll fly through the Milky Way Mapper’s stars to learn how our Galaxy evolved, dive into the Local Volume Mapper’s view of the glowing gas clouds where stars are bor...