SkyMapper is a state-of-the-art automated wide field survey telescope representing a new vehicle for scientific discovery. It is sited under the dark skies of Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, central NSW. SkyMapper's mission is to robotically create the first comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky. The survey will be a massively detailed record of over a billion stars and galaxies, to a depth that is one million times fainter than the human eye can see. The survey's data set will be made freely available to the scientific and general community via the internet.
The telescope's advanced 1.35 metre modified Cassegrain optics have an f4.79 focal ratio, making the system highly efficient as a photographic instrument. At the heart of the telescope is a unique digital camera designed and constructed in house by ANU technicians. The A$2.5 million camera uses 268 million pixels to capture a region of sky 29 times larger than the full moon every minute. As well as recording the brightness and shape of objects, a series of filters enables the camera to record the spectral type of stars, giving astronomers information about their age, mass and temperature.
Because SkyMapper will image each part of the sky 36 times, it will help identify changes occurring within the Universe that would otherwise pass unnoticed. This will enable astronomers to identify targets of special interest and should greatly assist in tasks such as discovering large dwarf planets like Pluto in the outer solar system, and tracking asteroids.
The volume and quality of SkyMapper data will also enable astronomers to:
-
create a comprehensive census of the stars in our Galaxy
-
map the invisible material (known as dark matter), which makes up the majority of our Galaxy (using samples of very rare stars uncovered in the survey)
-
uncover the first quasars and stars to form in the history of the Universe
Over the next five years, SkyMapper will generate 100 Megabytes of data per second during every clear night. At the end of the Southern Sky Survey, this will amount to about 500 Terabytes of data (equivalent to 100,000 DVDs). A distilled version of the Survey will be made publicly available and will include a set of images of all the stars, galaxies, and nebulae, as well as a database containing the accurate colour, position, brightness, variability, and shape of every one of the billions of objects in the southern sky.
Home
About Us
SkyMapper
