World's Largest Digital Camera to Watch for Killer Asteroids

nationalgeographic ^ | June 22, 2010 | Brian Handwerk

[JoeProBono]

If a planet-destroying asteroid is headed for Earth, scientists now have a much better chance of spotting it.

From its perch atop Hawaii’s dormant Haleakala volcano, the PS1 telescope, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun full-time operations, snapping hundreds of high-resolution photos each day as it scans the sky for space rocks and strange stellar phenomena.

PS1 is the first of several telescopes planned as part of the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS. The telescope will map near-Earth asteroids ranging in size from 984 feet (300 meters)—big enough to cause major regional destruction if one struck an inhabited area—to 0.6-mile (1-kilometer), which have the potential to produce global catastrophe.

“It provides the best early-warning system we have,” said Edo Berger, a professor with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has studied data from the telescope. The center is part of a consortium that is helping to fund PS1.

A Digital Eye Bigger Than Hubble's

Although PS1 first came online in late 2008, it only began complete dusk-to-dawn operations last month.

Now, every 30 seconds PS1 snaps a 1,400-megapixel shot of a section of sky as large as 36 full moons—a view 3,600 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera. One of these images would produce a 300-dpi print covering half a basketball court.

In total the telescope gathers enough data to fill a thousand DVDs (nearly five terabytes) every night and maps a sixth of the sky each month. It can also see objects ten times fainter than previous surveys.

These abilities are key to discovering not only killer space rocks but huge numbers of much more common phenomena, from planet-size bodies in our solar system to far-flung cosmic cataclysms......

[gulfcoast6]

Watching the Whie house?? Isn’t HE destroying the world?

[thackney]

1,400 megapixels

With the rate of technology changes, in 8 years we will have that on the iPhone.

[Made In The USA]

Yeah, but does it have red-eye correction?

Thing must take like a whole Sam’s Club worth of those expensive little lithium batteries....

[SunkenCiv]

I saw "Deep Impact" on, hmm, BluRay, nice and cheap, at the warehouse club tonight. :')

Thanks KoRn! A two-list ping.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks KoRn! A two-list ping.

If a planet-destroying asteroid is headed for Earth, scientists now have a much better chance of spotting it.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

[rdl6989]

Lol. I spent a few quarters on that one back in the day.

[upsdriver]

If a planet-destroying asteroid is headed for Earth....... it would solve a lot of our problems.

[LiberConservative]

Interesting. I just watched one of my favorite movies, “Deep Impact” last night for about the 5th time.

[SunkenCiv]

The Threat to Earth from Asteroids & Comets
http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/asteroid-threat/asteroid_threat.html