Skip to main content
title

Early Science Results from The Pan-STARRS Wide Field Imaging Survey (Karl W. Kamper Memorial Lecture)

Pan-STARRS is a distributed aperture wide-field optical/NIR imaging system featuring 1.8m diameter telescopes with 1.4 billion pixel detectors.  The first telescope PS1 has been fully operational and relentlessly surveying the sky for almost 3 years and is delivering median image quality of 1.1″ FWHM.  By the end of next year PS1 will have surveyed the entire sky North of -30 declination with 12 ~50sec visits in each of g, r, i, z and y pass-bandbands and the stacked images over 30,000 square degrees will go approximately 1 magnitude deeper than the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  PS1 also surveys a number of selected fields with much longer exposures. The Pan-STARRS system will shortly be augmented by the arrival of the second telescope PS2, which will at least double the power of the system.  I shall describe the design and demonstrate the performance of the system; present some early science results, and describe the synergies between Pan-STARRS and other all-sky surveys that will be coming on line in the coming decade.

Cody Hall

Nick Kaiser (U of Hawaii)

October 05, 2012
14:00 - 15:00