The Euclid mission is an ambitious space-based astronomical survey designed to explore the dark universe—specifically, dark energy and dark matter, which together constitute about 95% of the universe’s total energy and mass content. Launched in 2023 by the European Space Agency, Euclid employs advanced optical and near-infrared instruments to capture high-resolution images and spectra of billions of galaxies across a substantial fraction of the sky. The mission aims to map the large-scale structure of the universe and investigate cosmic expansion, shedding light on fundamental cosmological questions about the nature of dark energy and the evolution of cosmic structures. As part of the NASA Euclid General Investigator Program, we are developing novel deep learning tools for Euclid.
The Rubin/Legacy Survey of Space and Time uses a dedicated 8.4m telescope and state-of-the-art 3.2-gigapixel camera. Beginning in 2025, LSST will produce an animated, 3D cosmic map with unprecedented depth and detail, opening a new way to study the universe. We develop image-based deep learning tools for Rubin/LSST. We also use LSST to study the origins and mergers of intermediate-mass and supermassive black holes.
Scheduled to launch by 2027, the Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s flagship mission designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view that is 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time. As the primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument will measure light from a billion galaxies over the course of the mission lifetime. As part of the Roman Science Working group, we develop deep learning tools to maximize Roman science. We also use Roman to discover galactic-scale dual massive black holes across cosmic time and massive black hole binaries as LISA precursors.
SDSS-V is conducting the first all-sky, time-domain spectroscopic survey. Starting from 2021, the SDSS-V survey has been performing optical and near-infrared, multi-epoch spectroscopy for Milky Way stars and distant supermassive black holes, as well as integral field spectroscopy of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. We use SDSS-V to discover binary supermassive black holes by monitoring radial velocities of the secondary relative to the primary – in analogy to radial velocity searches for exoplanets.
The Subaru PFS Survey will investigate the distribution of dark matter by measuring the kinematics of one million stars, perform a cosmological survey over 1400 deg2 to measure the expansion rate of the universe and density of the dark energy, and observe a million galaxies to create a census of early galaxies up to the epoch of star and galaxy formation. We use PFS to study galaxy and black hole formation and evolution in the early universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope complements and extends the discoveries of Hubble, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. JWST looks much closer to the beginning of time and hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today. We use JWST to peek into merging supermassive black holes at much earlier cosmic epochs than ever seen before, such as the dynamic duo in the close quasar pair in the disk-disk galaxy merger SDSS J0749 + 2255 at z=2.17, and particularly in the “cosmic noon” — peak epoch for star formation and supermassive black hole growth.
We leverage supercomputing resources available at NCSA, such as Delta. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Innovative High-Performance Computing Program and building on the success of Blue Waters, Delta is the most performant GPU computing resource in NSF’s portfolio, making it a prime destination for advanced scientific research. We work with talented undergrads across the Illinois campus on computationally intensive projects through NCSA’s Students Pushing Innovation and NSF’s REU programs.