Title: An Introduction to Dark Energy Science and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Abstract: In this talk, I will introduce the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project, a giant survey telescope that will be located in Chile and is designed to make a three-dimensional survey of the entire visible sky. Using the LSST, over ten years the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration will examine billions of galaxies, hundreds of thousands of supernovae and several other probes to try to determine the nature of the mysterious “Dark Energy” which is unaccountably causing the universe to be pushed apart at a faster and faster rate. The LSST will open a whole new field of observational cosmology by collecting an unprecedented amount of data and addressing some of the most fundamental questions we have about space-time including the nature of gravity, dark energy, and dark matter. This data will be available to the public and looked at by science collaborations formed to extract science from the instrument. In this presentation, I will introduce the science, the instrument, and some of the techniques we will use to try to elucidate the nature of dark energy.