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| An artistic rendering of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, with a man standing beside for perspective of the camera's size. (Image courtesy LSST Project) view » |
A 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera designed by SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory is now one step closer to reality. The Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope camera, which will capture the widest, fastest
and deepest view of the night sky ever observed, has received “Critical
Decision 1” approval by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to move
into the next stage of the project.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the entire
visible sky every week, creating an unprecedented public archive of data
– about 6 million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting
roughly 800,000 images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera
every night, but of much higher quality and scientific value. Its deep
and frequent cosmic vistas will help answer critical questions about the
nature of dark energy and dark matter and aid studies of near-Earth
asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, the structure of our galaxy and many
other areas of astronomy and fundamental physics.
“With 189 sensors and over 3 tons of components that have to be packed
into an extremely tight space, you can imagine this is a very complex
instrument,” said Nadine Kurita, the project manager for the LSST camera
at SLAC. “But given the enormous challenges required to provide such a
comprehensive view of the universe, it’s been an incredible opportunity
to design something so unique.”
Now that the LSST camera has passed Critical Decision 1, the project
begins a detailed engineering design, schedule, and budget phase. While
the DOE funds the design and construction of the camera, the full cost
and logistics of the new telescope are being shared by the DOE and the
National Science Foundation, as well as a large partnership of public
and private organizations in the United States and abroad.
“This is the culmination of years of work by a large group of dedicated
people,” said SLAC’s Steven Kahn, LSST deputy project director and
leader of the DOE-funded effort on LSST. “I’ve personally been working
on this since 2003, and it is tremendously satisfying to finally see
this move forward to the point when we can begin to carry out the
project.”
If all continues as planned, construction on the telescope will begin
in 2014. Preliminary work has already started on LSST’s 8.4-meter
primary mirror and its final site atop Cerro Pachón in northern Chile.
As the primary component of all energy in the universe, the
still-mysterious dark energy is perhaps the most important research
target for LSST and the physicists who are building it. Yet that’s only a
start. LSST’s fire hose of publicly available data will allow
astronomers the world over to view faint and rapidly changing objects,
create 3D maps and time lapses of the night sky and detail Pluto’s
celestial neighborhood, the Kuiper belt.
"Not only should LSST revolutionize our understanding of the universe,
its contents and the laws that govern its behavior, but it will also
transform the way all of us, from kindergarteners to professional
astrophysicists, use telescopes,” said Tony Tyson, LSST director and a
professor of physics at the University of California, Davis. “These are
exciting times!"
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in
photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator
research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by
Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.
The DOE-led LSST camera project at SLAC was begun under the auspices of
the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint
institute of SLAC and Stanford University. To learn more, please visit www.slac.stanford.edu.
More information about the LSST including current images, graphics, and animation can be found at http://www.lsst.org.
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