Stephen Kent

Mostly at:Fermilab
Position: Senior Scientist
(Former) Head, SCD/Cosmic Frontier Dept (or something like that)
Phone:(630)840-8264
Fax:(630)840-8274
Email:skent-at-fnal.gov
Occasionally at: University of Chicago
Position: CASE Senior Scientist Affiliate

Recent images

Peacemaker - Sept 9, 2019, Tucson




The perfect solution for resolving conflicts within your collaboration.

Solar Eclipse, Aug 21, 2017, near Elkville, IL

70%Totality
Filter: #11 welder's glass Filter: None

Totality. The sun has "set" at every point of the compass.


Sun "setting" in East Sun "setting" in West

Recent Publications

(2018, PASP, 130, 4501) Non-axisymmetric aberration patterns from wide-field telescopes using spin-weighted Zernike Polynomials

(2023, AJ, 166, 177) Astrometric Calibration and Performance of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Focal Plane

Current Research Projects:

Dark Energy Survey

DES Resources:

Public websites:

  • www.darkenergysurvey.org
  • DES on Facebook
  • Dark Energy Detectives

    • Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

  • desi.lbl.gov Project to build a 5000 fiber spectrograph for the Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona

    • LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope)

  • www.lsst.org Public website
  • www.lsst-desc.org LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

    • Former Research Project:

    Sloan Digital Sky Survey

    Note: Fermilab participated in SDSS I/II. The SDSS has continued with additional surveys since then.

  • www.sdss.org: Public website. Provides information and access to data from previous (as well as current) surveys.
  • www.astro.princeton.edu: Project Book - provides much technical information about the original design and implementation.

    • Observational Foundations of Cosmology

    A series of essays I wrote commenting on historical papers from the early years of cosmology.
    I have moved this material to its own page.

    Bayesian Inference

    A set of links to articles on Bayes Theorem and its applications. I give a derivation of the theorem and then show how it can be applied to problems involving cosmology, search and recovery, and true crime.

    Other

    End of the road: