Fwd: [Interactions News Wire] #33-12: SLAC - World's Largest Digital Camera Project Passes Critical Milestone

[Orlando Leibovitz]

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From: "Interactions News Wire" <news...@interactions.org>

Subject: [Interactions News Wire] #33-12: SLAC - World's Largest Digital Camera Project Passes Critical Milestone

Date: April 24, 2012 9:31:05 AM MDT

To: interactio...@lists.xenomedia.com

Interactions NewsWire #33-12
24 April 2012 http://www.interactions.org
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Source: SLAC
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 24 April 2012
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World's Largest Digital Camera Project Passes Critical Milestone

Menlo Park, Calif. - A 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera designed by SLAC
National Accelerator Laboratory is now one step closer to reality. The
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera, which will capture the widest,
fastest and deepest view of the night sky ever observed, has received
"Critical Decision 1" approval by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to
move into the next stage of the project.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the entire visible
sky every week, creating an unprecedented public archive of data - about 6
million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000
images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera every night, but of
much higher quality and scientific value. Its deep and frequent cosmic
vistas will help answer critical questions about the nature of dark energy
and dark matter and aid studies of near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper belt
objects, the structure of our galaxy and many other areas of astronomy and
fundamental physics.

"With 189 sensors and over 3 tons of components that have to be packed
into an extremely tight space, you can imagine this is a very complex
instrument," said Nadine Kurita, the project manager for the LSST camera
at SLAC. "But given the enormous challenges required to provide such a
comprehensive view of the universe, it's been an incredible opportunity to
design something so unique."

Now that the LSST camera has passed Critical Decision 1, the project
begins a detailed engineering design, schedule, and budget phase. While
the DOE funds the design and construction of the camera, the full cost and
logistics of the new telescope are being shared by the DOE and the
National Science Foundation, as well as a large partnership of public and
private organizations in the United States and abroad.

"This is the culmination of years of work by a large group of dedicated
people," said SLAC's Steven Kahn, LSST deputy project director and leader
of the DOE-funded effort on LSST. "I've personally been working on this
since 2003, and it is tremendously satisfying to finally see this move
forward to the point when we can begin to carry out the project."

If all continues as planned, construction on the telescope will begin in
2014. Preliminary work has already started on LSST¹s 8.4-meter primary
mirror and its final site atop Cerro Pachón in northern Chile.

As the primary component of all energy in the universe, the
still-mysterious dark energy is perhaps the most important research target
for LSST and the physicists who are building it. Yet that's only a start.
LSST's fire hose of publicly available data will allow astronomers the
world over to view faint and rapidly changing objects, create 3D maps and
time lapses of the night sky and detail Pluto¹s celestial neighborhood,
the Kuiper belt.

"Not only should LSST revolutionize our understanding of the universe, its
contents and the laws that govern its behavior, but it will also transform
the way all of us, from kindergarteners to professional astrophysicists,
use telescopes," said Tony Tyson, LSST director and a professor of physics
at the University of California, Davis. "These are exciting times!"

SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon
science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located
in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The DOE-led LSST camera
project at SLAC was begun under the auspices of the Kavli Institute for
Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint institute of SLAC and
Stanford University. To learn more, please visit www.slac.stanford.edu.

LSST project activities are supported in part by a Cooperative Agreement
with the National Science Foundation managed by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and the Department of
Energy. Additional LSST funding comes from private donations, grants to
universities, and in-kind support from LSSTC Institutional Members:

Adler Planetarium; Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL); California
Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell
University; Drexel University; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory;
George Mason University; Google, Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics; Institut de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules
(IN2P3); Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle
Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) - Stanford University; Las Cumbres
Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); National Optical
Astronomy Observatory; National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Princeton
University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science
Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory;
Space Telescope Science Institute; Texas A & M University; The
Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of
California at Davis; University of California at Irvine; University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan; University of
Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington;
Vanderbilt University.

More information about the LSST including current images, graphics, and
animation can be found at http://www.lsst.org

High Resolution LSST Camera Image (Image Courtesy of the LSST
Corporation): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16826548/LSST-Camera-CU.jpg

Contact:
Andy Freeberg, Media Relations Manager
afre...@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-4359





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Orlando Leibovitz

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