[meteorite-list] Hawaii-Based PS1 Telescope Takes Its First Images

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Jun 28 12:11:50 2006
Message-ID: <200606281600.JAA17077_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/28/ps1_is_go/

Killer asteroid hunter takes first snaps
Near-Earth objects beware
By Lester Haines
The Register (United Kingdom)
Juen 28, 2006

The first of four powerful telescopes which will eventually be capable
of locating 99 per cent of potentially-threatening near-Earth objects
(NEOs) bigger than 300 metres has captured its first test images,
New Scientist reports.

The Hawaii-based PS1 telescope - part of the Panoramic Survey Telescope
& Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project, and seen here atop
Hawaii's Haleakala volcano - packs a 1.8 metre mirror, and although it's
currently kitted out with a small test camera, this will be upgraded to
a 300 megapixel device in September and subsequently to a 1.4bn pixel
beast in March 2007.

The grand plan is the response to a 1998 Congress mandate which required
NASA "to identify 90 per cent of NEOs larger than 1 kilometre across by
the end of 2008". In 2005, Congress upped the ante by requesting that
NASA "extend the search down to objects 140 metres across"* by 2020.

Nick Kaiser of the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu declared that,
once fully operational, PS1 will be "by far the most powerful survey
instrument" in the world for pinning down NEOs.

However, there is a catch, according to Brian Marsden, of the Minor
Planet Centre at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in
Massachusetts. Because of its power, Pan-STARRS may be "the only game in
town for a while", he explained. Accordingly, and because lesser
instuments will not be able to track the orbits of newly-identified
objects, the PS telescopes will have the additional burden of "doing
their own follow-up work" in determining whether they pose a threat to
humanity.
Received on Wed 28 Jun 2006 12:00:28 PM PDT