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RSAA News of the Month: January 2003

Stromlo Southern Sky Survey Commences This Year

 

2003 sees the start of a five-year program to completely map the southern sky in six colours ranging from the near-Ultra Violet to the near-Infra Red. The survey was to have used the ex-Great Melbourne Telescope. Unfortunately this telescope has been severely damaged in the recent fires. The survey team are determined to continue, and planning is already underway to find an alternative telescope. The project may be delayed somewhat by this setback, but is definitely not terminated!

The last all-sky surveys were done using photographic plates on the Mt. Palomar Schmidt telescope in the Northern hemisphere, and the UK Schmidt at Siding Spring in NSW. Our new survey will be completely digital, using one of the world's largest CCD cameras. Survey data will be calibrated and stored at the Australian National University's Supercomputer facility, and will be available to the public on-line. It will be the definitive catalogue of the southern sky and will be used by virtually every astronomer on the planet.

Programs are being developed to help "mine" the massive database. Users will be able to immediately measure the brightness, colour and position of targets to a level of accuracy many times better than that measurable from the photographic surveys. Survey areas will be imaged several times over the five years. This will provide information on the variability of light from the objects, and as a by-product will discover many new variable stars.

Survey data will have immediate application to several current projects, e.g.:

• mapping the Solar System beyond Neptune, discovering Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and measuring their orbital dynamics;
• finding the youngest and nearest stars, studying solar systems in the making;
• how far does the dark halo of our galaxy extend, and what is the role of dark matter in galaxies?
• finding the oldest stars in the Universe;
• calibrating large-scale galaxy redshift surveys for brightness, colour and morphology

and countless other projects in progress or in the future.

A similar survey, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is underway in the northern hemisphere. It will be completed about the same time as the Stromlo survey and has already discovered the most distant object in the known universe.

Principal Scientists for the project are Prof. Mike Bessell, Dr Paul Francis and Prof. Brian Schmidt. Brian has just been awarded an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship as part of this project.

The survey is partially funded by Australian Research Council Discovery and Linkage -Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grants.

RSAA's newest professor, Brian Schmidt.

For previous "RSAA News of the Month", click here.