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