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World's Largest Digital Sky Survey (Pan-STARRS) Issues Biggest Astronomical Data Release Ever

posted by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the pan-skyed dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

World's largest digital sky survey issues biggest astronomical data release ever

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, in conjunction with the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), is releasing the second edition of data from Pan-STARRS—the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System—the world's largest digital sky survey. This second release contains over 1.6 petabytes of data (a petabyte is 1015 bytes or one million gigabytes), making it the largest volume of astronomical information ever released.

[...] The Pan-STARRS observatory consists of a 1.8-meter telescope equipped with a 1.4-billion-pixel digital camera, located at the summit of Haleakalā, on Maui. Conceived and developed by the IfA, it embarked on a digital survey of the sky in visible and near-infrared light in May 2010. Pan-STARRS was the first survey to observe the entire sky visible from Hawai'i multiple times in many colors of light. One of the survey's goals was to identify moving, transient, and variable objects, including asteroids that could potentially threaten the Earth. The survey took approximately four years to complete, scanning the sky 12 times in five filters. This second data release provides, for the first time, access to all of the individual exposures at each epoch of time. This will allow astronomers and public users of the archive to search the full survey for high-energy explosive events in the cosmos, discover moving objects in our own solar system, and explore the time domain of the universe.

[...] The four years of data comprise 3 billion separate sources, including stars, galaxies, and various other objects. This research program was undertaken by the PS1 Science Consortium—a collaboration among 10 research institutions in four countries, with support from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Consortium observations for the sky survey were completed in April 2014. The initial Pan-STARRS public data release occurred in December 2016, but included only the combined data and not the individual exposures at each epoch of time.

Pan-STARRS.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:47AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:47AM (#793421) Journal

    The thing seems to be underfunded. They only have 2 of the planned 4 telescopes.

    The very large field of view of the telescopes and the short exposure times enable approximately 6000 square degrees of sky to be imaged every night. The entire sky is 4π steradians, or 4π × (180/π)² ≈ 41,253.0 square degrees, of which about 30,000 square degrees are visible from Hawaii, which means that the entire sky can be imaged in a period of 40 hours (or about 10 hours per night on four days). Given the need to avoid times when the Moon is bright, this means that an area equivalent to the entire sky will be surveyed four times a month, which is entirely unprecedented. By the end of its initial three-year mission in April 2014, PS1 had imaged the sky 12 times in each of 5 filters (g,r,i,z,y).

    So you could get the whole sky imaged twice as often with two more.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:35AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:35AM (#793434) Journal

    Still darn slow, judging by some of the objectives,
    Namely

    ... and Rapid Response System... One of the survey's goals was to identify moving, transient, and variable objects, including asteroids that could potentially threaten the Earth.
    ...
    The survey took approximately four years to complete, scanning the sky 12 times in five filters.

    I doubt that 1 sky scan/4 months can qualify as Rapid.

    (I mean... look... for the Dottie asteroid, we had an advance warning of only 18 days. it resulted in the obliteration of Paris [youtube.com] and we needed to sacrifice Bruce Willis to the avoid the worst of it!)

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    • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:02AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:02AM (#793453) Journal

      The mantle of killer asteroid finder is probably going to be stolen by LSST [wikipedia.org]:

      Site construction began on April 14, 2015, with first light anticipated in 2020, and full operations for a ten-year survey commencing in January 2022.

      [...] The Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a 6.5-m-class optical telescope designed to survey the visible sky every week down to a much fainter level than that reached by existing surveys.

      [...] The LSST design is unique among large telescopes (8 m-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 the Moon, as seen from 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 m2∙degree2. This is more than three times the etendue of best existing telescopes, the Subaru Telescope with its Hyper Suprime Camera, and Pan-STARRS, and more than an order of magnitude better than most large telescopes.

      [...] There is no proprietary period associated with alerts—they are available to the public immediately, since the goal is to quickly transmit nearly everything LSST knows about any given event, enabling downstream classification and decision making. LSST will generate an unprecedented rate of alerts, hundreds per second when the telescope is operating. Most observers will be interested in only a tiny fraction of these events, so the alerts will be fed to "event brokers" which forward subsets to interested parties. LSST will provide a simple broker, and provide the full alert stream to external event brokers. The Zwicky Transient Facility will serve as a prototype of LSST system, generating 1 million alerts per night.

      [...] NASA has been tasked by the US Congress with detecting and cataloging 90% of the NEO population of size 140 meters or greater. LSST, by itself, is estimated to detect 62% of such objects, and according to the National Academy of Sciences, extending its survey from ten years to twelve would be the most cost-effective way of finishing the task.

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