CCA Colloquium: Mike Blanton

Title: Galaxies Near and Far with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract: I will discuss the recent work of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey on cosmology and galaxy evolution, based on the observations from its fourth phase, which completed its six year program on the morning of January 21, 2021. This spectroscopic survey mapped the Milky Way galaxy, ten thousand nearby galaxies, and finished the largest three-dimensional map of the universe to date. I will describe a sampling of what we have learned, focusing on: tests of the “simplest” model of the universe’s expansion (which seems to be the right one); observations of star-formation and the flow of gas within galaxies; and on the formation history and migration of stars within our own galaxy.