Humans have been mapping the sky for thousands of years. In this talk, I will describe our current efforts as undertaken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. SDSS is an unprecedented spectroscopic survey that has revealed a tremendous amount of information about our cosmos. I will describe its fifth phase, mapping of over six million objects, from stars, to black holes, to Galaxies. SDSS is designed to decode the history of the Universe and the galaxies within it, trace the emergence of the chemical elements, reveal the inner workings of stars, and investigate the origin of planets. I will endeavor to explain why we do this and how taking on this massive, complex, and seemingly esoteric undertaking, humanity ultimately benefits.

Dr. Juna Kollmeier is the director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA). She received her B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology and Ph.D. in astronomy from Ohio State University. Before moving to CITA, she was a Hubble Fellow and a Carnegie-Princeton postdoctoral fellow, and then Carnegie research staff since 2008.

The George and Maureen Ewan Lecture series was endowed by Queen’s Physics Professor George Ewan and his wife Maureen in 2018 to support seminar and lecture programs designed to increase scientific discourse and culture within the Particle Astrophysics community at Queen’s University and the broader Kingston community.