Pan-STARRS
Andrew Usher
exciting things to happen is astronomy in a long time. Why hasn't its
survey begun yet? I'm unable to find any information about what's
going on.
Andrew Usher
Uncle Al
Possibly because it is artificial employment. "Pan-STARRS - Panoramic
Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System" It's looking for Near Earth
objects that will whack our fannies.
1) From spaceweather.com: "On January 3, 2010 there were 1091
potentially hazardous asteroids." La de dah. The massive database of
potentially hazarous NEOs begs two singular conclusions,
2) We are not a target for anything disastrous, and
3) If NASA were given ten years' advanced notice of impending
centered in the reticle doom, we'd still all dead. NASA will be
debating White Papers and optimizing designs when the shockwave hits.
4) 25 May 1961: Kennedy says we're going to the moon. Starting
with Nazis and slide rules, 20 July 1969: Neil Armstrong steps onto
the moon. 14 January 2004: Bush the Lesser says we're gonna return to
the moon. 28 October 2009: With NASA hugely in place, already knowing
a working answer, and with monstrous supercomputer Columbia to mesh
simulate the world, NASA launches its Ares I heavy lifter and proves
it is dog shit.
What is the point of Pan-STARRS? To cry wolf?
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
BradGuth
> (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
Just because we've managed to detect and catalog one out of a ten NEOs
thus far enough ahead of time, doesn't mean that the next one isn't
going to be as sooty dark and radar absorbing as carbon nanotubes, and
otherwise dead on the mark (naturally that'll have to be NYC), or at
least that of delivering a serious grazing blow to one of our oceans.
~ BG
Pat Flannery
Here's the project homepage: http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/
They apparently ran into problems with image quality, and are dealing
with those:
http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/project-status/project-status.html
"During the first few months regular observing, concerns arose about
image jitter and local atmospheric seeing effects. Although the
telescope is sometimes capable of producing excellent images over the
entire field with sub-arcsecond resolution, problems with image quality
were detected in an unacceptably large fraction of the images PS1 was
producing. It was therefore decided to suspend regular observing in
September 2009 in order to address these problems.
The telescope will be back on the air by Thanksgiving 2009: testing of
the modified mirror support will occur in December/January. Several
thermal imaging experiments will be also performed around the telescope.
It is hoped to resume full science operation shortly after this."
Pat
BradGuth
Perhaps they're more concerned about that pesky Warhol "lake of fire",
or the LHC doom and gloom thing.
~ BG
Sam Wormley
>
> Just because we've managed to detect and catalog one out of a ten NEOs
> thus far enough ahead of time, doesn't mean that the next one isn't
> going to be as sooty dark and radar absorbing as carbon nanotubes, and
> otherwise dead on the mark (naturally that'll have to be NYC), or at
> least that of delivering a serious grazing blow to one of our oceans.
>
> ~ BG
Get real, Brad, it'll hit the Middle East.
BradGuth
NYC is simply a bigger electrostatic asteroid magnet, as well as
having way more sinners like Ponzi Madoff and all those at his kosher
approved SEC.
~ BG
Andrew Usher
> "During the first few months regular observing, concerns arose about
> image jitter and local atmospheric seeing effects. Although the
> telescope is sometimes capable of producing excellent images over the
> entire field with sub-arcsecond resolution, problems with image quality
> were detected in an unacceptably large fraction of the images PS1 was
> producing. It was therefore decided to suspend regular observing in
> September 2009 in order to address these problems.
> The telescope will be back on the air by Thanksgiving 2009: testing of
> the modified mirror support will occur in December/January. Several
> thermal imaging experiments will be also performed around the telescope.
> It is hoped to resume full science operation shortly after this."
Yeah, but what are they doing? They have this fancy camera for the
purpose, they sure ought to be (when the telescope is working) doing a
global survey of the sky and releasing the results in a reasonable
form. Anything else wouldn't be taking advantage of this breakthrough.
Andrew Usher
Pat Flannery
>
> Yeah, but what are they doing? They have this fancy camera for the
> purpose, they sure ought to be (when the telescope is working) doing a
> global survey of the sky and releasing the results in a reasonable
> form. Anything else wouldn't be taking advantage of this breakthrough.
If you read between the lines on their website, they are trying to
figure out what is causing their telescope to wiggle around, and where
the heat is coming from that's causing air turbulence in front of its
optics, both of which are causing around 50% of their imagery to suck.
Hopefully, they don't find that there is some fundamental problem with
where the telescope is sited, or how it was made.
Pat
Andrew Usher
Alright, so this delay wasn't anticipated. I'm really looking forward
to seeing the promised marvelous results of such a universal sky
survey.
Andrew Usher
Dan Birchall
Another thing to consider is that the current telescope is "PS-1" - the
first of 4 in the final Pan-STARRS system. "PS-2" is under construction
in another nearby dome on Maui, but delays resulted in the loss of some
funding, so the University of Hawaii is working on lining up new funding
to complete the full 4-telescope Pan-STARRS atop Mauna Kea, on the site
now occupied by the UH 88" telescope. (Pan-STARRS would be in a smaller
enclosure, with reduced sight-lines.)
I worked for UH's Institute for Astronomy (as an operator at the 88")
from 2004-2009. The first time I heard Pan-STARRS mentioned was around
2005, with the (optimistic) goal of having it finished and in place on
Mauna Kea by 2008. When I left the 88" in May of 2009, everything I
heard indicated that it would be decommissioned in 2011, but since
then, I've heard that the need to find some new funding for Pan-STARRS
has pushed "the end" back to 2012/2013 for the 88".
It will be interesting to see whether Pan-STARRS is completed and
commissioned before the LSST, which has similar aspirations, but using
one large telescope instead of 4 small ones.
-Dan
--
djb@ | Dan Birchall, Night Operation Assistant, Subaru Telescope/NAOJ.
naoj | Views I express are my own, obviously not those of my employer.
.org | I only wear black so much because I can't find anything darker.
Andrew Usher
wrote:
> Another thing to consider is that the current telescope is "PS-1" - the
> first of 4 in the final Pan-STARRS system.
Yeah, but it should be able to do the same thing as the full setup,
only 1/4 the speed, which is still much faster than any thing before.
> It will be interesting to see whether Pan-STARRS is completed and
> commissioned before the LSST, which has similar aspirations, but using
> one large telescope instead of 4 small ones.
Well, this seems like an embarrassment. Something like those projects
should have been implemented long ago. Certainly they deserve funding
more than anything else in astronomy (that I can think of).
Andrew Usher
Dan Birchall
> On Jan 19, 8:48�am, Dan Birchall <d...@naoj.org.REMOVE_TO_REPLY>
> wrote:
>
> > Another thing to consider is that the current telescope is "PS-1" - the
> > first of 4 in the final Pan-STARRS system.
>
> Yeah, but it should be able to do the same thing as the full setup,
> only 1/4 the speed, which is still much faster than any thing before.
Yeah. I had a friend who was working over there, but I think he's onto
something else now. I'll have to ask him whether they got it working
better and back on-sky.
> > It will be interesting to see whether Pan-STARRS is completed and
> > commissioned before the LSST, which has similar aspirations, but using
> > one large telescope instead of 4 small ones.
>
> Well, this seems like an embarrassment. Something like those projects
> should have been implemented long ago. Certainly they deserve funding
> more than anything else in astronomy (that I can think of).
I know people involved in both projects who would be heartened to hear
that kind of remark - but NEOs are only one of several "hot topics" in
astronomy these days, along with exoplanets, dark matter, dark energy,
and so on. And while bigger faster surveys are certainly a Good Thing,
the fact that there are plenty of smaller slower surveys out there may
make it hard to get funding that might otherwise go for something
completely new and different, to detect something that is thus far only
hypothesized.
--
djb@ | Dan Birchall, Night Operation Assistant, Subaru Telescope/NAOJ.
naoj | Views I express are my own, certainly not those of my employer.
.org | Why do phasers have fewer settings than Kitchenaid bowl mixers?
Andrew Usher
wrote:
> Yeah. I had a friend who was working over there, but I think he's onto
> something else now. I'll have to ask him whether they got it working
> better and back on-sky.
Alright, let us know if you can.
> > Well, this seems like an embarrassment. Something like those projects
> > should have been implemented long ago. Certainly they deserve funding
> > more than anything else in astronomy (that I can think of).
>
> I know people involved in both projects who would be heartened to hear
> that kind of remark - but NEOs are only one of several "hot topics" in
> astronomy these days, along with exoplanets, dark matter, dark energy,
> and so on.
While I agree the surveys aren't much help with exoplanets or dark
matter/dark energy, they are about more than just NEOs. And those will
be pretty damn important if there turns out to be one that will hit
the earth in the next century!
> And while bigger faster surveys are certainly a Good Thing,
> the fact that there are plenty of smaller slower surveys out there may
> make it hard to get funding that might otherwise go for something
> completely new and different, to detect something that is thus far only
> hypothesized.
Right, astronomy is all about getting funding ;)
By the way, that last comma should have been omitted - it made the
sentence seem to say the opposite of what you meant.
Andrew Usher
Dan Birchall
> On Jan 27, 1:13�am, Dan Birchall <d...@naoj.org.REMOVE_TO_REPLY>
> wrote:
>
> > Yeah. �I had a friend who was working over there, but I think he's onto
> > something else now. �I'll have to ask him whether they got it working
> > better and back on-sky.
>
> Alright, let us know if you can.
I pinged a couple people. My friend said he was doing some fiddling
with a probe or something. Management told me that over the winter,
they scheduled a few weeks of downtime and fixed the structural
issues they were having (secondary support or something?) modifying
things and fabricating new bits where needed.
The results they're now getting are almost to the point where they
need them, but they still have some thermal issues to rectify due to
recycling an old un-vented dome from LURE or MAGNUM or whatever it
was; they might add some vents to the dome to help with thermal
equalization.
They're now gearing up for a 1-month run of datataking, with the
real-time data-processing pipeline and everything running. They'll
analyze what they get to determine whether it's good enough to start
full operations. People sound hopeful that they'll be fully
operational this summer - and yes, that's about 18 months late.
They're eager to get PS1 operational and focus on completing PS2,
and they're eager to get PS1 finding NEOs, to help make the case for
funds for PS4. Which, presuming they get PS1 working, looks to be
about 4 years off. (Yeah, I know, 5 years ago it was only 3 years
off! ;)
-D
Andrew Usher
Now I can't understand why this can't be on the website instead of the
uselessness there now.
Andrew Usher
Dan Birchall
Heh. I used to be a web coder, webmaster, web developer and so on, and
agree that sites often don't include information I really wish they did.
But having made the switch to astronomy some years back, I'd rather
they allocate time and resources to making the telescope work than to
keeping the web site up to date. ;)
Dan Birchall
> k_over...@yahoo.com (Andrew Usher) wrote:
> > Thanks. This is what I was look for.
> >
> > Now I can't understand why this can't be on the website instead of
> > the uselessness there now.
>
> Heh. I used to be a web coder, webmaster, web developer and so on, and
> agree that sites often don't include information I really wish they did.
> But having made the switch to astronomy some years back, I'd rather
> they allocate time and resources to making the telescope work than to
> keeping the web site up to date. ;)
The latest edition of the Institute for Astronomy's newsletter (ignore
the 2009 date at the top; it makes reference to things in mid-February
in the past tense, so it's clearly 2010) has a blurb about the current
status of PS1:
http://www2.ifa.hawaii.edu/newsletters/article.cfm?a=471&n=39
-Dan
Andrew Usher
> The latest edition of the Institute for Astronomy's newsletter (ignore
> the 2009 date at the top; it makes reference to things in mid-February
> in the past tense, so it's clearly 2010) has a blurb about the current
> status of PS1:
>
> http://www2.ifa.hawaii.edu/newsletters/article.cfm?a=471&n=39
So they have done what I said. I wonder when any of this information
will be available to the public? I would think also that this
'demonstration month' should be over.
Andrew Usher
Byran _
In the period from 2 February to 26 February 2010 PS1 discovery 95 new
asteroids, and performed 55 847 observations of 17 694 known
asteroids.
When the project starts searching for trans-Neptunian objects?