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Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
"LSST" redirects here. For the Lincolnshire School of Science and Technology, see The Priory LSST.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a planned wide-field "survey" reflecting telescope that will photograph the available sky every three nights. Construction should start in 2010 with first light in 2015.
The telescope will be located on the El Penon peak of Cerro Pachon, a 2682 metre high mountain in Coquimbo Region, in northern Chile, alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes.
Overview
The LSST is unique among large telescopes (8m-class primary mirrors) in having a very wide field of view: 3.5 degrees in diameter, or 9.6 square degrees. For comparison, both the Sun and Moon, as seen from the Earth, are 0.5 degrees across, or 0.2 square degrees. Combined with its large aperture (and thus light-collecting ability), this will give it a spectacularly large etendue of 319 m²degree².
To achieve this very wide undistorted field of view requires three mirrors, rather than the two used by most existing large telescopes: the primary mirror will be 8.4 metres in diameter, the secondary mirror will be 3.4 metres in diameter, and the tertiary mirror, located in a large hole in the primary, will be 5.0 metres in diameter. The large hole reduces the primary mirror's light collecting area to 35 m², equivalent to a 6.68 m diameter circle.
The primary/tertiary mirror will be built as a monolithic unit, and construction of the mold began in November 2007 at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, with casting planned for late March 2008. A 3.2 gigapixel prime focus digital camera will take a 15-second exposure every 20 seconds.
Allowing for maintenance, bad weather, etc., the camera is expected to take over 200,000 pictures per year, far more than can be reviewed by humans. Managing and effectively data mining the enormous output of the telescope is expected to be the most technically difficult part of the project.
In January, 2008 software billionaires Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates pledged $20 million and $10 million respectively to the project. The project continues to seek a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $400 million.
Scientific goals
Particular scientific goals of the LSST include:
Measuring weak gravitational lensing in the deep sky to detect dark energy and dark matter.
Mapping small objects in the solar system, particularly Near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper belt objects.
Detecting transient optical events such as Novae and Supernovae.
Mapping the Milky way.
It is also hoped that the vast volume of data produced will lead to additional serendipitous discoveries.
Synoptic is an adjective from the same root as the noun "synopsis", and means "relating to data obtained nearly simultaneously over a large area."
Some of the data from the LSST will be made available by Google as an up-to-date interactive night-sky map .
See also
Pan-STARRS, a rival project with similar goals
List of largest optical reflecting telescopes
External links
LSST reports and documentation
LSST Tutorials for Experimental Particle Physicists is a detailed explanation of LSST's design (as of February 2006) and weak lensing science goals that does not assume a lot of astronomy background.
The New Digital Sky is a video of a July 25, 2006 presentation at Google about the LSST, particularly the data management issues.
HULIQ Google participation announcement
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
