They Just Began Casting the Giant Magellan Telescope’s 5th Mirror. What a Monster Job.

The fifth mirror for the GMT's 7 segment primary mirror is being cast at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory at the University of Arizona. In this image, a worker at the lab places the last piece of glass for mirror 5. Image: Giant Magellan Telescope Organization

The fifth mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is now being cast, according to an announcement from the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO), the body behind the project. The GMT is a ground-breaking segmented telescope consisting of 7 gigantic mirrors, and is being built at the Las Campanas Observatory, in Atacama, Chile.

The mirrors for the GMT are being cast at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory, at the University of Arizona. This lab is the world centre when it comes to building large mirrors for telescopes. But in a lab known for ground-breaking, precision manufacturing, the GMT’s mirrors are pushing the engineering to its limits.

Seven separate mirrors, each the same size (8.4 meters,) will make up the GMT’s primary mirror. One mirror will be in the centre, and six will be arranged in a circle around it. Each one of these mirrors is a 20 ton glass behemoth, and each one is cast separately. Once the seven are manufactured (and one extra, just in case) they will be assembled at the observatory site.

The result will be an optical, light-gathering surface almost 24.5 meters (80 ft.) in diameter. That is an enormous telescope, and it’s taking extremely precise engineering and manufacturing to build these mirrors.

The glass for the mirrors is custom-manufactured, low-expansion glass from Japan. This glass comes as blocks, and each mirror requires exactly 17,481 kg of these glass blocks. A custom built furnace and mold heats the glass to 1165°C (2129°F) for several hours. The glass liquefies and flows into the mold. During this time, the mold is rotated at up to 5 rpm. Then the rotation is slowed, and for several months the glass cools in the mold.

After lengthy cooling, the glass can be polished. The tolerances for the mirrors, and the final shape they must take, requires very careful, extremely accurate polishing. The first mirror was cast in 2005, and in 2011 it was still being polished.

The mirrors for the GMT are not flat; they’re described as “potato chips.” They’re aspherical and parabaloidal. They have to be surface polished to an accuracy of 25 nanometers, which is a fraction of the wavelength of light.

Precision manufacturing is at the heart of the Giant Magellan Telescope. The surface of each mirror must be polished to within a fraction of the wavelength of light. Image: Giant Magellan Telescope Organization

“Casting the mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope is a huge undertaking, and we are very proud of the UA’s leading role creating this new resource for scientific discovery. The GMT partnership and Caris Mirror Lab are outstanding examples of how we can tackle complex challenges with innovative solutions,” said UA President Robert C. Robbins. “The University of Arizona has such an amazing tradition of excellence in space exploration, and I have been constantly impressed by the things our faculty, staff, and students in astronomy and space sciences can accomplish.”

Mirror construction for the GMT is a multi-stage process. The first mirror was completed several years ago and is in storage. Three others are in various stages of grinding and polishing. The glass for mirror 6 is in storage awaiting casting, and the glass for mirror 7 is on order from Japan.

Once completed, the GMT will be situated in Atacama, at the Las Campanas Observatory, where high-elevation and clear skies make for excellent seeing conditions. First light is planned for the mid 2020’s.

When the mirrors for the GMT are completed, they are transported in a special container with shock absorbers and insulation. In this image, the first completed mirror is moved from the Caris Mirror Lab to storage several miles away. Image: GMTO Corp.

The GMT will be largest telescope in existence, at least until the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope supersede it.

“Creating the largest telescope in history is a monumental endeavor, and the GMT will be among the largest privately-funded scientific initiatives to date,” said Taft Armandroff, Professor of Astronomy and Director of the McDonald Observatory at The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice-Chair of the GMTO Corporation Board of Directors. “With this next milestone, and with the leadership, technical, financial and scientific prowess of the members of the GMTO partnership, we continue on the path to the completion of this great observatory.”

The power of the GMT will allow it to directly image extra-solar planets. That alone is enough to get anyone excited. But the GMT will also study things like the formation of stars, planets, and disks; the assembly and evolution of galaxies; fundamental physics; and first light and re-ionization.

The Giant Magellan Telescope is one of the world’s Super Telescopes that we covered in this series of articles. The Super Telescopes include the:

Giant Magellan Telescope
James Webb Space Telescope
Thirty Meter Telescope
European Extremely Large Telescope
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope

You can also watch our videos on the Super Telescopes: Part 1: Ground Telescopes, and Part 2: Space Telescopes.

May 11, 2017May 11, 2017 by Evan Gough

Rise of the Super Telescopes: Why We Build Them

One night 400 years ago, Galileo pointed his 2 inch telescope at Jupiter and spotted 3 of its moons. On subsequent nights, he spotted another, and saw one of the moons disappear behind Jupiter. With those simple observations, he propelled human understanding onto a path it still travels.

Galileo’s observations set off a revolution in astronomy. Prior to his observations of Jupiter’s moons, the prevailing belief was that the entire Universe rotated around the Earth, which lay at the center of everything. That’s a delightfully childish viewpoint, in retrospect, but it was dogma at the time.

Until Galileo’s telescope, this Earth-centric viewpoint, called Aristotelian cosmology, made sense. To all appearances, we were at the center of the action. Which just goes to show you how wrong we can be.

But once it became clear that Jupiter had other bodies orbiting it, our cherished position at the center of the Universe was doomed.

Galileo Galilei set off a revolution in astronomy when he used his telescope to observe moons orbiting Jupiter. By Justus Sustermans - http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?ID=BHC2700, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=230543 — Galileo Galilei set off a revolution in astronomy when he used his telescope to observe moons orbiting Jupiter. By Justus Sustermans – http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?ID=BHC2700, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=230543

Galileo’s observations were an enormous challenge to our understanding of ourselves at the time, and to the authorities at the time. He was forced to recant what he had seen, and he was put under house arrest. But he never really backed down from the observations he made with his 2 inch telescope. How could he?

Now, of course, there isn’t so much hostility towards people with telescopes. As time went on, larger and more powerful telescopes were built, and we’ve gotten used to our understanding going through tumultuous changes. We expect it, even anticipate it.

In our current times, Super Telescopes rule the day, and their sizes are measured in meters, not inches. And when new observations challenge our understanding of things, we cluster around out of curiosity, and try to work our way through it. We don’t condemn the results and order scientists to keep quiet.

The first of the Super Telescopes, as far as most of us are concerned, is the Hubble Space Telescope. From its perch in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the Hubble has changed our understanding of the Universe on numerous fronts. With its cameras, and the steady stream of mesmerizing images those cameras deliver, a whole generation of people have been exposed to the beauty and mystery of the cosmos.

The Hubble Space Telescope could be considered the first of the Super Telescopes. In this image it is being released from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990. Image: By NASA/IMAX - http://mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=1711, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6061254 — The Hubble Space Telescope could be considered the first of the Super Telescopes. In this image it is being released from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990. Image: By NASA/IMAX – http://mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=1711, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6061254

Hubble has gazed at everything, from our close companion the Moon, all the way to galaxies billions of light years away. It’s spotted a comet breaking apart and crashing into Jupiter, dust storms on Mars, and regions of energetic star-birth in other galaxies. But Hubble’s time may be coming to an end soon, and other Super Telescopes are on the way.

Nowadays, Super Telescopes are expensive megaprojects, often involving several nations. They’re built to pursue specific lines of inquiry, such as:

What is the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy? How are they distributed in the Universe and what role do they play?
Are there other planets like Earth, and solar systems like ours? Are there other habitable worlds?
Are we alone or is there other life somewhere?
How do planets, solar systems, and galaxies form and evolve?

Some of the Super Telescopes will be on Earth, some will be in space. Some have enormous mirrors made up of individual, computer-controlled segments. The Thirty Meter Telescope has almost 500 of these segments, while the European Extremely Large Telescope has almost 800 of them. Following a different design, the Giant Magellan Telescope has only seven segments, but each one is over 8 meters in diameter, and each one weighs in at a whopping 20 tons of glass each.

This artistic bird's-eye view shows the dome of the ESO European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in all its glory, on top of the Chilean Cerro Armazones. The telescope is currently under construction and its first light is targeted for 2024. — This artistic bird’s-eye view shows the dome of the ESO European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in all its glory, on top of the Chilean Cerro Armazones. The telescope is currently under construction and its first light is targeted for 2024.

Some of the Super Telescopes see in UV or Infrared, while others can see in visible light. Some see in several spectrums. The most futuristic of them all, the Large Ultra-Violet, Optical, and Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), will be a massive space telescope situated a million-and-a-half kilometers away, with a 16 meter segmented mirror that dwarfs that of the Hubble, at a mere 2.4 meters.

Some of the Super Telescopes will discern the finest distant details, while another, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will complete a ten-year survey of the entire available sky, repeatedly imaging the same area of sky over and over. The result will be a living, dynamic map of the sky showing change over time. That living map will be available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

A group photo of the team behind the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. The group gathered to celebrate the casting of the 'scope's 27.5 ft diameter mirror. The LSST will create a living, detailed, dynamic map of the sky and make it available to anyone. Image: LSST Corporation — A group photo of the team behind the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. The group gathered to celebrate the casting of the ‘scope’s 27.5 ft diameter mirror. The LSST will create a living, detailed, dynamic map of the sky and make it available to anyone. Image: LSST Corporation

We’re in for exciting times when it comes to our understanding of the cosmos. We’ll be able to watch planets forming around young stars, glimpse the earliest ages of the Universe, and peer into the atmospheres of distant exoplanets looking for signs of life. We may even finally crack the code of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and understand their role in the Universe.

Along the way there will be surprises, of course. There always are, and it’s the unanticipated discoveries and observations that fuel our sense of intellectual adventure.

The Super Telescopes are technological masterpieces. They couldn’t be built without the level of technology we have now, and in fact, the development of Super Telescopes help drives our technology forward.

But they all have their roots in Galileo and his simple act of observing with a 2-inch telescope. That, and the curiosity about nature that inspired him.

The Rise of the Super Telescopes Series:

May 11, 2017May 11, 2017 by Evan Gough

Rise of the Super Telescopes: The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) aka Hubble 2.0

An artist's illustration of a 16 meter segmented mirror space telescope. There are no actual images of LUVOIR because the design hasn't been finalized yet. Image: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems & NASA/STScI

We humans have an insatiable hunger to understand the Universe. As Carl Sagan said, “Understanding is Ecstasy.” But to understand the Universe, we need better and better ways to observe it. And that means one thing: big, huge, enormous telescopes.

In this series we’ll look at the world’s upcoming Super Telescopes:

The Giant Magellan Telescope
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
The 30 Meter Telescope
The European Extremely Large Telescope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR)

The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor Telescope (LUVOIR)

There’s a whole generation of people who grew up with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Not just in magazines, but on the internet, and on YouTube. But within another generation or two, the Hubble itself will seem quaint, and watershed events of our times, like the Moon Landing, will be just black and white relics of an impossibly distant time. The next generations will be fed a steady diet of images and discoveries stemming from the Super Telescopes. And the LUVOIR will be front and centre among those ‘scopes.

If you haven’t yet heard of LUVOIR, it’s understandable; LUVOIR is in the early stages of being defined and designed. But LUVOIR represents the next generation of space telescopes, and its power will dwarf that of its predecessor, the Hubble.

LUVOIR (its temporary name) will be a space telescope, and it will do its work at the LaGrange 2 point, the same place that JWST will be. L2 is a natural location for space telescopes. At the heart of LUVOIR will be a 15m segmented primary mirror, much larger than the Hubble’s mirror, which is a mere 2.4m in diameter. In fact, LUVOIR will be so large that the Hubble could drive right through the hole in the center of it.

This not-to-scale image of the Solar System shows the LaGrangian points. LUVOIR will be located in a halo orbit at L2, along with the JWST. Image: By Xander89 - File:Lagrange_points2.svg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36697081 — This not-to-scale image of the Solar System shows the LaGrangian points. LUVOIR will be located in a halo orbit at L2, along with the JWST. Image: By Xander89 – File:Lagrange_points2.svg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36697081

While the James Webb Space Telescope will be in operation much sooner than LUVOIR, and will also do amazing work, it will observe primarily in the infrared. LUVOIR, as its name makes clear, will have a wider range of observation more like Hubble’s. It will see in the Ultra-Violet spectrum, the Optical spectrum, and the Infrared spectrum.

Recently, Brad Peterson spoke with Fraser Cain on a weekly Space Hangout, where he outlined the plans for the LUVOIR. Brad is a recently retired Professor of Astronomy at the Ohio State University, where served as chair of the Astronomy Department for 9 years. He is currently the chair of the Science Committee at NASA’s Advisory Council. Peterson is also a Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the chair of the astronomy section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Different designs for LUVOIR have been discussed, but as Peterson points out in the interview above, the plan seems to have settled on a 15m segmented mirror. A 15m mirror is larger than any optical light telescope we have on Earth, though the Thirty Meter Telescope and others will soon be larger.

“Segmented telescopes are the technology of today when it comes to ground-based telescopes. The JWST has taken that technology into space, and the LUVOIR will take segmented design one step further,” Peterson said. But the segmented design of LUVOIR differs from the JWST in several ways.

“…the LUVOIR will take segmented design one step further.” – Brad Peterson

JWST’s mirrors are made of beryllium and coated with gold. LUVOIR doesn’t require the same exotic design. But it has other requirements that will push the envelope of segmented telescope design. LUVOIR will have a huge array of CCD sensors that will require an enormous amount of electrical power to operate.

The Hubble Space Telescope on the left has a 2.4 meter mirror and the James Webb Space Telescope has a 6.5 meter mirror. LUVOIR, not shown, will dwarf them both with a massive 15 meter mirror. Image: NASA

LUVOIR will not be cryogenically cooled like the JWST is, because it’s not primarily an Infrared observatory. LUVOIR will also be designed to be serviceable. In fact, the US Congress now requires all space telescopes to be serviceable.

“Congress has mandated that all future large space telescopes must be serviceable if practicable.” – Brad Peterson

LUVOIR is designed to have a long life. It’s multiple instruments will be replaceable, and the hope is that it will last in space for 50 years. Whether it will be serviced by robots, or by astronauts, has not been determined. It may even be designed so that it could be brought back from L2 for servicing.

LUVOIR will contribute to the search for life on other worlds. A key requirement for LUVOIR is that it do spectroscopy on the atmospheres of distant planets. If you can do spectroscopy, then you can determine habitability, and, potentially, even if a planet is inhabited. This is the first main technological challenge for LUVOIR. This spectroscopy requires a powerful coronagraph to suppress the light of the stars that exoplanets orbit. LUVOIR’s coronagraph will excel at this, with a ratio of starlight suppression of 10 billion to 1. With this capability, LUVOIR should be able to do spectroscopy on the atmospheres of small, terrestrial exoplanets, rather than just larger gas giants.

“This telescope is going to be remarkable. The key science that it’s going to do be able to do is spectroscopy of planets in the habitable zone around nearby stars.” – Brad Peterson

This video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center talks about the search for life, and how telescopes like LUVOIR will contribute to the search. At the 15:00 mark, Dr. Aki Roberge talks about how spectroscopy is key to finding signs of life on exoplanets, and how LUVOIR will take that search one step further.

Using spectroscopy to search for signs of life on exoplanets is just one of LUVOIR’s science goals.

LUVOIR is tasked with other challenges as well, including:

Mapping the distribution of dark matter in the Universe.
Isolating the source of gravitational waves.
Imaging circumstellar disks to see how planets form.
Identifying the first starlight in the Universe, studying early galaxies and finding the first black holes.
Studying surface features of worlds in our Solar System.

To tackle all these challenges, LUVOIR will have to clear other technological hurdles. One of them is the requirement for long exposure times. This puts enormous constraints on the stability of the scope, since its mirror is so large. A system of active supports for the mirror segments will help with stability. This is a trait it shares with other terrestrial Super Telescopes like the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope. Each of those had hundreds of segments which have to be controlled precisely with computers.

A circumstellar disk of debris around a matured stellar system may indicate that Earth-like planets lie within. LUVOIR will be able to see inside the disk to watch planets forming. Credit: NASA — A circumstellar disk of debris around a matured stellar system may indicate that Earth-like planets lie within. LUVOIR will be able to see inside the disk to watch planets forming.
Credit: NASA

LUVOIR’s construction, and how it will be placed in orbit are also significant considerations.

According to Peterson, LUVOIR could be launched on either of the heavy lift rockets being developed. The Falcon Heavy is being considered, as is the Space Launch System. The SLS Block 1B could do it, depending on the final size of LUVOIR.

“I’s going to require a heavy lift vehicle.” – Brad Peterson

Or, LUVOIR may never be launched into space. It could be assembled in space with pre-built components that are launched one at a time, just like the International Space Station. There are several advantages to that.

With assembly in space, the telescope doesn’t have to be built to withstand the tremendous force it takes to launch something into orbit. It also allows for testing when completed, before being sent to L2. Once the ‘scope was assembled and tested, a small ion propulsion engine could be used to power it to L2.

It’s possible that the infrastructure to construct LUVOIR in space will exist in a decade or two. NASA’s Deep Space Gateway in cis-lunar space is planned for the mid-20s. It would act as a staging point for deep-space missions, and for missions to the lunar surface.

LUVOIR is still in the early stages. The people behind it are designing it to meet as many of the science goals as they can, all within the technological constraints of our time. Planning has to start somewhere, and the plans presented by Brad Peterson represent the current thinking behind LUVOIR. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

“Typical time scale from selection to launch of a flagship mission is something like 20 years.” – Brad Peterson

As Peterson explains, LUVOIR will have to be chosen as NASA’s highest priority during the 2020 Decadal Survey. Once that occurs, then a couple more years are required to really flesh out the design of the mission. According to Peterson, “Typical time scale from selection to launch of a flagship mission is something like 20 years.” That gets us to a potential launch in the mid-2030s.

Along the way, LUVOIR will be given a more suitable name. James Webb, Hubble, Kepler and others have all had important missions named after them. Perhaps its Carl Sagan’s turn.

“The Carl Sagan Space Telescope” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

March 3, 2017May 15, 2017 by Evan Gough

Rise of the Super Telescopes: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

An artist's illustration of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with a simulated night sky. The team hopes to use the LSST to further refine their search for hard-surface supermassive objects. Image: Todd Mason, Mason Productions Inc. / LSST Corporation

In this series we’ll look at 6 of the world’s Super Telescopes:

The Giant Magellan Telescope
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
The Thirty Meter Telescope
The European Extremely Large Telescope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

While the world’s other Super Telescopes rely on huge mirrors to do their work, the LSST is different. It’s a huge panoramic camera that will create an enormous moving image of the Universe. And its work will be guided by three words: wide, deep, and fast.

While other telescopes capture static images, the LSST will capture richly detailed images of the entire available night sky, over and over. This will allow astronomers to basically “watch” the movement of objects in the sky, night after night. And the imagery will be available to anyone.

The LSST is being built by a group of institutions in the US, and even got some money from Bill Gates. It will be situated atop Cerro Pachon, a peak in Northern Chile. The Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes are also situated there.

The Camera Inside the ‘Scope

At the heart of the LSST is its enormous digital camera. It weighs over three tons, and the sensor is segmented in a similar way that other Super Telescopes have segmented mirrors. The LSST’s camera is made up of 189 segments, which together create a camera sensor about 2 ft. in diameter, behind a lens that is over 5 ft. in diameter.

Each image that the LSST captures is 40 times larger than the full moon, and will measure 3.2 gigapixels. The camera will capture one of these wide-field images every 20 seconds, all night long. Every few nights, the LSST will give us an image of the entire available night sky, and it will do that for 10 years.

“The LSST survey will open a movie-like window on objects that change brightness, or move, on timescales ranging from 10 seconds to 10 years.” – LSST: FROM SCIENCE DRIVERS TO REFERENCE DESIGN AND ANTICIPATED DATA PRODUCTS

The LSST will capture a vast, movie-like image of over 40 billion objects. This will range from distant, enormous galaxies all the way down to Potentially Hazardous Objects as small as 140 meters in diameter.

The primary-tertiay mirror at its construction facility. Image: LSST

There’s a whole other side to the LSST which is a little more challenging. We get the idea of an in-depth, moving, detailed image of the sky. That’s intuitively easy to engage with. But there’s another side, the data mining challenge.

The Data Challenge

The whole endeavour will create an enormous amount of data. Over 15 terabytes will have to be processed every night. Over its 10 year lifespan, it will capture 60 petabytes of data.

Once data is captured by the LSST, it will travel via two dedicated 40 GB lines to the Data Processing and Archive Center. That Center is a super-computing facility that will manage all the data and make it available to users. But when it comes to handling the data, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“LSST is a new way to observe, and gaining knowledge from the Big Data LSST delivers is indeed a challenge.” – Suzanne H. Jacoby, LSST

The sheer amount of data created by the LSST is a challenge that the team behind it saw coming. They knew they would have to build the capacity of the scientific community in advance, in order to get the most out of the LSST.

Handling all of the data from the LSST requires its own infrastructure. Image: LSST

As Suzanne Jacoby, from the LSST team, told Universe today, “To prepare the science community for LSST Operations, the LSST Corporation has undertaken an “Enabling Science” effort which funds the LSST Data Science Fellowship Program (DSFP). This two-year program is designed to supplement existing graduate school curriculum and explores topics including statistics, machine learning, information theory, and scalable programming.”

The Science

The Nature of Dark Matter and Understanding Dark Energy

Contributing to our understanding Dark Energy and Dark Matter is a goal of all of the Super Telescopes. The LSST will map several billion galaxies through time and space. It will help us understand how Dark Energy behaves over time, and how Dark Matter affects the development of cosmic structure.

Cataloging the Solar System

The raw imaging power of the LSST will be a game-changer for mapping and cataloguing our Solar System. It’s thought that the LSST could detect between 60-90% of all potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) larger than 140 meters in diameter, as far away as the main asteroid belt. This will not only contribute to NASA’s goal of identifying threats to Earth posed by asteroids, but will help us understand how planets formed and how our Solar System evolved.

Exploring the Changing Sky

The repeated imaging of the night sky, at great depth and with excellent image quality, should tell us a lot about supernovae, variable stars, and possible other events we haven’t even discovered yet. There are always surprising results whenever we build a new telescope or send a probe to a new destination. The LSST will probably be no different.

Milky Way Structure & Formation

The LSST will give us an unprecedented look at the Milky Way. It will survey over half of the sky, and will do so repeatedly. Hundreds of times, in fact. The end result will be an enormously detailed look at the motion of millions of stars in our galaxy.

Open Access

Perhaps the best part of the whole LSST project is that the all of the data will be available to everyone. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection will be able to access LSST’s movie of the Universe. It’s warm and fuzzy, to be sure, to have the results of large science endeavours like this available to anyone. But there’s more to it. The LSST team suspects that the majority of the discoveries resulting from its rich data will come from unaffiliated astronomers, students, and even amateurs.

It was designed from the ground up in this way, and there will be no delay or proprietary barriers when it comes to public data access. In fact, Google has signed on as a partner with LSST because of the desire for public access to the data. We’ve seen what Google has done with Google Earth and Google Sky. What will they come up with for Google LSST?

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a kind of predecessor to the LSST, was modelled in the same way. All of its data was available to astronomers not affiliated with it, and out of over 6000 papers that refer to SDSS data, the large majority of them were published by astronomers not affiliated with SDSS.

First Light

We’ll have to wait a while for all of this to come our way, though. First light for the LSST won’t be until 2021, and it will begin its 10 year run in 2022. At that time, be ready for a whole new look at our Universe. The LSST will be a game-changer.