The ANU has reached agreement with
Queanbeyan firm Electro-Optic
Systems (EOS) to develop a design for a new 1.8 metre telescope which will
be the fastest sky mapper in the world.
The Skymapper Telescope will be built jointly by EOS and Mt Stromlo Observatory staff and installed at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran. It will be fully automated and will be linked to observers at Mount Stromlo, the Director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Professor Penny Sackett, said.
The Skymapper will be complemented by a new two-metre telescope called The Phoenix, to be built on Mount Stromlo, to be used both by researchers and the public.
If construction of the Skymapper began in the near future, a planned five-year ANU project to produce the first digital map of the Southern Sky could still be completed on schedule, the Director of the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Professor Penny Sackett said.
“A team of ANU staff led by Professor Brian Schmidt was awarded a $1m Australian Research Council grant last year for the Southern Sky Survey and had planned to use the Great Melbourne Telescope on Mount Stromlo until it was destroyed by the fires.
“The Skymapper Telescope offers exciting capabilities which we have not had at Stromlo before,” Professor Sackett said.
The Skymapper’s unique capability will include a huge viewing area - 30 times larger than the full moon and more than 3 times bigger than any other large telescope in the world. It will be able to map the southern sky in one week – ten times faster than any other telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
The telescope will use a cutting edge 300-million pixel digital camera that not only is 100 times more sensitive than the human eye, but can help compensate for the blurriness (twinkling of stars) caused by the atmosphere.
EOS is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high performance telescopes. CEO Ben Greene said design of the Skymapper presented new challenges.
“This telescope pushes the
boundaries of telescope performance in many ways,” Dr Greene said, “but
we're confident that we have the technology to build it. This initial effort
will provide a detailed design to allow the telescope construction time and
cost to be minimised.”