The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will create the widest and deepest image of
the universe, and we're going to learn more about it starting now.
Hi everyone, my name is Christian Ready and if this is your first time here,
please be sure to subscribe and hit that notification icon so that you don't miss
out on any new videos. The most advanced telescopes ever built will be coming
online in the next few years, and in this video, I'd like to talk about the Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope. LSST, as it's known, is not the largest of these
telescopes, but it is in some ways the coolest. LSST is gonna be large, but it
won't be the largest. As a matter of fact, at 8.4 meters, it's actually
a little bit smaller than some of the largest telescopes in use today. But LSST
is a very different kind of telescope, unlike anything that we've ever built
before. The reason for this is because telescopes study everything from planets
to distant galaxies by looking at a relatively small patch of the sky for up
to several hours at a time. But the rest of the sky isn't sitting
still. So for example, there are asteroids that are moving from one place to
another ,and some of these may even pose a hazard to our health here on Earth.
Comets, Kuiper belt objects, and maybe even unseen planets are moving
undetected in their orbits around the Sun. Stars move in their orbits around
the center of our home galaxy, slowly changing their positions in the sky. And
as many as 1 million supernovae explode in distant galaxies every single day. And
meanwhile, the universe itself is expanding, taking those galaxies away
from us. And there's also weird things like dark matter at holding the galaxies
together, and dark energy pushing them away at an ever-accelerating rate. So the
sky is constantly changing, but in order to keep track of it we need a telescope
that is unlike any telescope we've ever built before. LSST will survey the entire
night sky every few days and repeat this process over ten years.
This will build up the widest and deepest survey of the sky ever made. To
do that, LSST will bounce light through a unique three mirror design consisting of
an 8.4 meter primary, a 3.4 meter convex secondary,
and a 5.0 meter tertiary. The result is a gigantic 9.62 square
degree image of the sky. That's more than 40 times the area of the full Moon. But a
giant image needs a giant camera. LSST's camera is the largest camera ever built.
It's about the size of a small SUV and it's covered with a 1.55 meter lens.
That's 50% larger than the largest refracting telescope in the world, and it
takes a 3.2 gigapixel image. That's 3.2 billion pixels! The whole assembly makes
for a very compact telescope that can quickly be pointed to the next position.
LSST will make about 800 images every single night. That means over one night
it'll generate 15 terabytes of data, and over its 10-year mission it'll generate
five million exposures. That equals over 50 petabytes of data - that's 50,000
terabytes of data, so you may want to think about buying some hard drives.
Software will automatically scan images, looking for anything that moves or goes
boom in the night. LSST will be located in Chile on the Cerro Pachón Ridge in
the foothills of the Andes Mountains. This will be located near the Gemini
South and SOAR telescopes. The telescope is under construction at several
locations. Its mirrors are being fabricated and tested at the University
of Arizona's mirror lab. The telescope itself is being built in Spain and
weighs in at 375 tons. The telescope assembly and its optics will be
integrated added at its observatory location in Chile. The observatory itself
is currently under construction at Cerro Pachón, and LSST is due to see first
light sometime 2021. After 10 years it will have
created a movie of the entire southern sky. It'll discover new objects, including
perhaps planets right here in our own solar system. It'll record supernovae and
watch the universe expand. It's an ambitious project, and we'll be able to
actually see for the first time the universe evolving in real time! So what
are you most interested in learning about from the LSST? Leave a comment
below and I'll be sure to check it out. And if this is your first time here,
don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification icon so you don't miss out
on any new videos. And while you're at it, hit the "like" button and share it with a
friend because you'll be making somebody's day, and helping me to grow
this channel. Until next time, keep watching the skies, and we'll see you soon.