| LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products (2008) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| We describe the most ambitious survey currently planned in the visible band, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a large, wide-field ground-based system designed to obtain multiple images covering the sky that is visible from Cerro Pachon in Northern Chile. The current baseline design, with an 8.4m (6.5m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 sq. deg. field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera, will allow about 10,000 sq.deg. of sky to be covered using pairs of 15-second exposures in two photometric bands every three nights on average, with typical 5-sigma depth for point sources of r=24.5. The system is designed to yield high image quality as well as superb astrometric and photometric accuracy. The survey area will include 30,000 sq.deg with delta. Comment: 29 pages, 33 color figures, high-resolution version available from http://www.lsst.org/overview | |||||||||
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