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New Hawaiian Telescope Dedicated
Honolulu HI (SPX) Jul 07, 2006 Astronomers dedicated the University of Hawai'i's newest telescope, called PS1, last Friday in a ceremony on the summit of Haleakala, the massive extinct caldera on the island of Mau'i. The telescope is a prototype for the larger Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS, telescope scheduled to start scanning the skies for "killer asteroids" in 2010. The telescope's mirror is only 71 inches in diameter - much smaller than the twin Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, whose mirrors are nearly 400 inches each. The PS1 will be unique because it will be equipped with the world's largest digital camera, currently under construction at the UH Institute for Astronomy's Manoa headquarters. The camera will contain 1.4 billion pixels -about 300 times more than in a typical commercial digital camera. Each night, PS1 will produce about 2,000 gigabytes of data, most of which will be sent by optical fiber to be analyzed at the Mau'i High Performance Computing Center in Kihe'i. When the telescope becomes operational, the PS1 survey will survey the whole sky every few days to find celestial objects that change or move. In addition to discovering millions of asteroids, some of which might pose a danger to Earth, PS1 will collect data to be analyzed by Hawaii astronomers and an international consortium. The data collected will help answer questions in areas of astronomy ranging from the solar system to the entire observable universe. In his speech at the dedication, Rolf Kudritzki, the Institute for Astronomy's director, noted that PS1 is the first astronomy project to be constructed on Haleakala following the guidelines established in the Haleakala High Altitude Observatory Site Long Range Development Plan. Kahu Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr. provided the "sense of place" training for all PS1 construction personnel, and he also served as the cultural monitor who oversaw all construction. According to Hawai'ian oral history, the ancient Hawai'ian astronomers and their students studied the sky from Pu'u Kolekole on the summit of Haleakala. The culmination of the dedication ceremony was the blessing of the building by two of Maxwell's grandsons and the untying of the maile lei, an act of respect, an expression of sense of place, and an explicit acknowledgment of the ancient Hawai'ian astronomers who first observed the universe from Haleakala. The telescope and its enclosure were built by EOS Technologies in Tucson, Arizona, and Canberra, Australia. The primary and secondary mirrors were developed through the efforts of Corning Inc., Raleigh Optical Corporation and Evaporated Metal Films Inc. Kudritzki described the dedication of PS1 as "a historic event, since Pan-STARRS is the most important University of Hawai'i telescope project in 30 years." PS1 achieved first light in late June, when engineers obtained test images of a number of stars. Related Links Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS
Technicians Reactivate Faulty Hubble Camera
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 03, 2006After 11 days, NASA engineers on Friday were able to activate the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, prompting huge sighs of relief among astronomers around the world. |
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