Astronomers from Hopkins have joined colleagues from across the globe in a new effort to catalog the night sky. Over the past year, astronomers at the University of Hawaii have been building a telescope that could protect the earth from potentially dangerous meteors.
The telescope, constructed at the Haleakala High Altitude Observatory in Maui, Hawaii, will use the world's largest digital camera and several relatively small mirrors to detect and analyze objects approaching the earth, such as asteroids and comets.
Funded by a $ 3.4 million grant from the U.S. Air Force, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) will produce massive volumes of data that will be useful to many scientific disciplines.
Pan-STARRS will have the capability to take images of areas 30 to 40 times the size of the full moon. As a result it will be able to survey the entire Hawaiian sky several times each month.
One of the applications of data gathered from this revolutionary telescope will be to aid the ongoing investigation of the "dark energy" that is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Hopkins astrophysicist Adam Riess, who studies dark energy is excited about the new information Pan-STARRS will provide. He told the Johns Hopkins Gazette, "This super-fast telescope will measure 100 times more dark energy-tracing supernovae than has ever been possible previously. Pan-STARRS will provide the next generation improvement in understanding dark energy, which is arguably the biggest question in physics."
Aside from Hopkins, the partership includes eight other institutions hoping to take advantage of the telescope's phenomenal offerings: the University of Hawaii, Harvard University, Max Planck Institutes for Astronomy and for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, Las Cumbres Observatory, Durham University, University of Edinburgh and Queen's University Belfast.
The ability to take pictures of broad swaths of the sky will also aid in detecting meteors that may be on a collision course with the Earth, which is a key venture in modern astronomy.
Alan Fitzsimmons, a professor of astronomy at Queen's University Belfast, explained the advantages of Pan-STARRS over older telescopes to BBC News. "The current generation of search telescopes are designed for the objects about one kilometer across and larger, because if one of those hits, it could cause instant global climate change.
"The smaller objects need a larger telescope and a more efficient camera system -- they're the kinds of objects Pan-STARRS has been designed to detect. Even though they're smaller and don't cause as much damage, there are more of them and they hit more frequently."
One of these smaller but more frequent asteroids exploded over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908. Luckily this was a relatively unpopulated area, but should this have occurred over an urban region, the consequences would have been devastating.
During the next three-and-a-half years scientists around the world will work to interpret the huge amounts of data that will be produced by Pan-STARRS. It is estimated that over one petabyte, or the equivalent of 1.5 million CDs worth of information, will come from the telescope over its lifetime, making it the most extensive astronomical survey undertaken to date.
Another Hopkins astrophysicist, Alexander Szalay, told the Gazette that he looks forward to the massive influx of information promised by the telescope. "Our participation in Pan-STARRS will provide an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity."
Such massive amounts of data will be used to contribute to many different astrological investigations including the construction of the most detailed three-dimensional map of the universe to date, the search for exploding stars or supernovae, and the evolution of galaxies over much of the lifespan of the universe.
