The construction of the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) Survey Telescope or Large Synoptic or Sondeos, will finally see the light after decades of planning and fundraising. The new telescope, with both public and private funding (Bill Gates contributed $ 10 million to the project and Charles Simonyi – a former Microsoft executive and well-known philanthropist – $ 20 million), will be made up of scientists from the University of Washington (USA). .UU.) And other institutions.
The new telescope, whose construction will begin next spring , will be located on top of a mountain in the Atacama desert of Chile, on Cerro Pachón, in the Coquimbo region, at 2,682 m. altitude . The choice of this location is due to the fact that it has the best atmospheric conditions and the highest number of clear nights per year, characteristics that favor its performance at an astronomical level.
The LSST will be an 8.4 meter telescope capable of examining the entire visible sky, that is, it will completely scan the sky every 3 or 4 nights with its 3,200 megapixel camera , analyzing the images in real time and detecting any changes in the sky. in a matter of seconds (for example the approach towards Earth of an asteroid). It would take the Hubble Space Telescope 120 years to accomplish what the LSST will do in just a few days (in fact, it is expected to take more than 200,000 pictures a year). As a curiosity, when the large telescope works at full capacity, it will require more than 100 Gbs of bandwidth per second.
The cost of its construction will reach 700 million dollars and the astronomers of the project expect to receive the first data in 2019, although its official commissioning is scheduled for 2021 . Once done, all the data and images will be free, that is, they will be available to anyone.
The truth is that LSST will offer us the largest movie of the sky, which will allow scientists to track the movement of billions of objects and see how stars are born and die. “With its ability to detect faint objects and peer into the far reaches of the universe, LSST has been designed to meet some of the greatest challenges in astronomy,” says Steven Kahn, LSST project manager.
