Through the topic itself, you can think this us about a telescope. You know what the glasses are. Usually, telescopes use to watch the sky. Watching means observing. Then as you can understand, these telescopes can apply for particular scientific purposes. The name of this telescope is the large synoptic survey telescope. Actually, this is the largest telescope in the world. Mainly this is a telescope that planned to use in the scientific missions. Today I would like to talk about this large synoptic survey telescope and see what the specialities of this telescope are. In the short form, this is known as LSST. Would you like that??? See below for more details.
About LSST
This is a reflecting telescope. Through this telescope, it can take photographs of the sky. As I told above, this had made out to perform that specific task. But this is under construction. The word synoptic is a rarely used word. That is from a Greek word. That means the “together view “. Even it describes observations that give a broad look of a subject that at a particular time. And this telescope covers a wide range.
This telescope is a production of a sizeable synoptic survey corporation. This will be expected to launch in 2020. But some details have been released about this telescope already. Therefore I’ll like to tell them. In the next year, you would be able to see the telescope yourselves.
There is a design for a telescope that is unique to them. That is a common factor for this telescope even. Here there are three-mirror anastigmat, paul Baker, Mersenne Schmidt wide angle. And also the diameter of this telescope about 8.417 metres. There are various diameter measurements. The physical diameter as the above one. 8.3 meters and 5.1 meters are it’s optical diameter and the inner diameter respectively. And it’s secondary diameter is about 3.42 meter and 5.016 is the tertiary diameter.
Telescope,
I told you about the unique parts of this telescope. By using those individual parts, the telescope delivers very sharp images of the sky. And those are over vast 3.5-degree diameter field of view. There is a huge camera that was ever made. It is 3.2 gigapixel CCD imaging camera. That is actually a digital camera. And that is placed in a very high location. It is at the El Penon peak of Cerro patron. It is a mountain that is high at about 2682 metres.
You know that this is still not finished. But the plan of LSST began in 2001. Then in 2007, the mirror is started to make. On the 1st of August, this project officially began. Not only the above but also during the 2010 Astrophysics decadal survey, this LSST project became the top-ranked large ground-based project. Plus this was named as the highest priority ground-based instrument.
Would you like to know the theory behind this LSST telescope??? Certainly, you like it. It is from the dark matter telescope. That concept used for this telescope. And in 2001 the new concepts of the LSST ever released. Already I told them in the above.
Some billionaires and millionaires are even involved in this project. Some examples for them are Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi.
Also,
There are some organisations involved in making this telescope. They are the SLAC National Accelerator Telescope, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, National Centre for Supercomputing Applications and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. These companies provide the camera and telescope and site team. Even they will provide support for making them.
When making this telescope in 2016, the critical situations have arisen. Those are the integration and testing. Even this is developed than the Subaru telescope and Pan STARRS. Now you can get an idea of how developed this telescope.
This telescope made for the sky surveys. There are some more of those sky surveys. For improvement of your knowledge, I’ll tell you some more sky surveys that are similar to this LSST project. See below for them.
Other sky research projects
Sloan digital sky survey is one of such research. Through this, there are about 14,555 square degrees researched. Pan STARRS is another main research. That is doing using two wide-field telescopes as well as that this is ongoing research. It covers about 30 000 square metres in the sky. Other than LSST, this is the best detector of the near-earth object. Gaia is another sky survey. Even this is an ongoing survey. That covers the entire sky but limited the collecting area about 0.7 Square meters. The goal of this research is to find about the astronomy hidden in millions of stars and galaxies. Another one is the dark energy survey. This is even ongoing sky research. This covers 5000 square degrees of the southern sky.
These above are some best sky surveys until the LSST comes. After the production of LSST, it will become the best surveying equipment. There are some main purposes that planned to fulfil by the LSST. They are as follows. Mainly there are four.
That’s four is,
- Mapping our galaxy: milky way galaxy
- Mapping other natural objects near to the earth. Some examples for them are Meteorites, comets and asteroids. And even Kuiper belt objects.
- To study dark matter and dark energy. That is researching by measuring the baryon acoustic oscillations and weak gravitational lensing.
- And to detect transient optical events including novae, supernovae, quasar and gamma-ray bursts.
The main goals are included in these above points. And scientists expect to have vast coverage of data can be obtained by this LSST. Even they hope to take those data to use to additional serendipitous discoveries.
In other than that this LSST can be categories as an educational program. As per the plans, LSST will join with the Zooniverse for numerous projects. And in the future google will make up to date sky map with the association of pictures by the LSST. Then we will see the best improvements in the sky research field.
After then, as I told above, there are various important parts in this telescope. Then I would like to describe them briefly.
Basic parts of the telescope 
The mirror
This had made for seven years. That is by University of Arizona’s steward observatory mirror lab. The mirror casting began in March 2008. In January 2011 the M1 and M2 had finished. After that, the M3 just began. And the production of mirror finished in December 2014. Then it accepted in 2015. Then for the protection, it stored in a mirror transport box. Again in the 2018 October, it took to the mirror lab. Then after completing all of these processes, it transferred to chile on the 7th of December 2018.
Except then the mirror, the other important part of this telescope is the camera. We will see about that.
The camera
The production of this camera began by the SLAC after the approval was given on the 31st of August. Until September of 2017, 72% of the output of the camera finished. In September the production of cryostat even finished.
There are so many new details about this camera. You can know them in the future. As soon as possible, the scientists would establish this large synoptic survey telescope. Then you don’t want to stay curiously. Then you can see the photographs of the sky taken by this telescope. Plus you can understand how is this good even.
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