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| garyb -at- physics.upenn.edu | |
| phone | (215) 573-6252 |
| fax | (215) 898-2010 |
| lab phone | - - - |
| room | 4N1, David Rittenhouse Laboratory |
| links | http://www.physics.upenn.edu/~garyb/ |
| degree | Ph.D., Physics, University of California, Berkeley (1989) |
| keywords | Astrophysics, Gravitational Lensing, Cosmology |
| overview | Professor Bernstein's research is focused on the use of gravitational lensing, the deflection of light by gravity as predicted by General Relativity. These deflections can cause dramatic distortions of background objects, or subtle weak lensing effects which can only be detected as statistical correlations among the shapes of millions of galaxies. These gravitational lensing effects have been used to measure the mass of dark matter halos around typical galaxies, the power spectrum of matter in the Universe, and the properties of the dark energy that is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Professor Bernstein is also working on methods to produce the best possible lensing results from future surveys, such as the Supernova Acceleration Probe in space, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope on the ground. The Penn astrophysics group is a partner in the largest funded US lensing survey, the Dark Energy Survey, which will obtain multicolor imaging of 5000 square degrees of the Southern sky. Past (and possible future) projects have included surveys of the Kuiper Belt, the reservoir of many thousands of small icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, remnants of the early phases of the formation of our Solar System. Professor Bernstein also constructed one of the first mosaic CCD cameras to be placed on a large telescope, which was used to measure weak gravitational lensing, the Kuiper Belt, and many of the high-redshift supernovae that first gave evidence of the acceleration of the Universe. |
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