OLLI 0179 - Lunch & Learn: Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Course Description
After nearly 15 years of design and construction, the Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile came to life and took its first light images on June 23, 2025. Dr. Dennis Roscoe will present these first amazing images. The telescope can image the entire Southern celestial sky every 3 nights, generating over 15 Terabytes of data each night. It discovered over 2000 new asteroids during its first night of operation. Roscoe will also discuss the design of the telescope and what we can expect to learn over the next 10 years. He holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Arizona School of Medicine and has a passion for astronomy and astrophotography and currently owns and operates his own personal observatory (RoscoeSkies.com).
Presenter(s)
Dennis Roscoe
Dennis Roscoe holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Arizona, School of Medicine. He has been a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University and a professor of Neurology at UW Madison, College of Medicine. For the past 16 years, he has also developed a passion for astronomy and astrophotography and currently owns and operates his own personal observatory (RoscoeSkies.com). He specializes in the imaging of deep space objects such as nebulae, and in May 2014, his images were published in TIME.com. He is a NASA Solar System Ambassador and teaches astrophotography as a guest lecturer at Carroll University.