04/10/2008 - 16:10
04/10/2008 - 17:30
Short Title: 
STA/BST 290: Samuel Schmidt
Short Desc: 
An introduction to photometric redshifts

THURSDAY, April 10th, 2008

 

Speaker: Samuel Schmidt (Physics, UC Davis)

Title: An introduction to photometric redshifts

Abstract: In this talk I will give a summary of the basic concepts of galaxy photometric redshifts. Photometric redshifts allow the (imprecise) measurement of millions of galaxy redshifts to greater distances and fainter limits than traditional methods using only a small number of observables for each galaxy. I will discuss some of the basic elements of photometric redshift computation for both empirical training set methods and those using a finite set of galaxy templates. The aim of this talk is to introduce the current state of photometric redshift computation, with the hope of spurring discussion of novel methods from the statistics community that may improve upon these methods.