Margalit part of team that wins Scialog Award in early LSST research

Assistant Professor Ben Margalit of the School of Physics and Astronomy was part of a team that won an award from the first year of the Scialog: Early Science from the LSST from the  Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). 

This Scialog–short for science + dialog– is a “three-year initiative that aims to advance the foundational science needed to realize the full potential of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)”.

The awards are aimed at closing possible gaps in funding and capability that might occur during the survey, which will give the broadest possible view of the night sky during a particular time. The survey is scheduled to begin, with the “first light” of the telescope in July of 2025. Margalit submitted a proposal “Not So Heavy Metal: An Enhanced Rate of SLSNe at Cosmic Noon,” with colleagues Allison Strom and Adam Miller (Northwestern University).

Margalit and the team will test the hypothesis that there should be an increased number of a phenomenon called “superluminous supernovae” around, so-called Cosmic Noon, a period of the highest star formation rates, around 10 billion years ago.