SkyMapper

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Who is SkyMapper?

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It’s a long way to the topof S S O

E1 Title: The Southern Sky Survey

E2 Project Description, Aims and Background

Project Description and Aims: We propo se to use the robotic Great Melbourne Telescope (GMT) to car ry out an optical survey of the entire southern sky. The survey will be: • Multi-Colour. We will observe at six wavelengths, from the near-UV to the near-IR

1. Photometric. We will measure the brightness of each object detected, at each wavelength, with systematic errors of less than 0.02 mag

2. Astrometric. We will determine the absolute positions of the objects we detect with an accuracy of better than 0.05 arcsec.

3. Sensitive to variability. Each part of the sky will be observed multiple times, to look for time variability and movement.

The RSAA director has guaranteed that at least 80% of the Great Melbourne Telescope observing time will be devoted to this project, over 5 years. We will generate 25 terabytes of data and will detect more than 109 objects. All calibrated data will be made publicly available on-line via the ANU supercomputer facility. We anticipate that the survey will be used for an enormous variety of scientific projects by astrophysicists worldwide for decades to come. The team members, however, are particularly interested in the following science goals: • Mapping the distribution of dark matter in the outer regions of our own galaxy.

• Searching for high redshift QSOs to probe the reionisation of the universe.

1 Jan 2003 - Our ARC DP grant starts.

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My own picture from 20th January 2003

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8 April 2003... Bushfire report to ARC

• 5. Supervise construction of a wide field (approx 7sq degree field of view) 1.8 meter telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. (New Goal)

• 6. Supervise construction of a >100 million pixel CCD array for the Siding Spring Survey Telescope. (New Goal)

• 7. Start taking data for the Southern Sky survey using the new Survey Telescope.

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• Aug 2004• Contract

let for 1.35m SkyMapper Telescope to EOS.

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The Mirror Crack’d - 2005

The sequel

The Mirror Crack’d Part III

The Mirror Crack’d - The Final Chapter

Dr. Zhivago to the rescue...

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2006 - Russian Deliver more or less on time

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Secondary from SAGEM - 2006 - on time

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• The whole thing put together mid 2007, in Tucson

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• First light, Tucson,

• July 2007

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• Bonn-Shutter - 2006 - arrives on time

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2006 - Focal Plane Dewar assembled

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$40,000 of filter glass from

Russia...

Complete with with

Cheese &

Pepperoni

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$2.5M of CCDs from E2V - arrive in 2006, on time

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Dome - 2007

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July 2008

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Telescope to SSO Sep 2008

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Telescope to SSO Sep 2008

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Telescope to SSO Sep 2008

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Telescope to SSO Sep 2008

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This week..

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Telescope:Site (Final) acceptance tests of Dome

happening now. Annino on his way up to site.

Site (Final) acceptance test of Telescope ~19 December.

As of OctoberTelescope meets performance specs at

Focal plane centre. Some primary support issues that are being addressed right now before handover.

Should be tested off axis before hand-over.

Test of full field of view performance awaits our theFocal Plane Array.

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Focal Plane Array:

Focal Plane Array nearing completion. Low noise, fast readout demonstrated for 2

chips (14s, 4e-)Problems exist in reading out more than 2

chips.To read out more than 16 chips

Waiting for new boards from UH(due anytime)

Waiting for power supplies (6-8 weeks)

Filters u,r,z completed... v,g about to be be assembledi awaits final coatings

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Commissioning (?):Will deploy with a working 16-chip system to be upgraded at site. We will not deploy a dodgy system.Could be Feb, but not earlier.

AlignmentPreliminary Science demonstration(Will call for targets once we know when,

and the state of the system)

Regular Operations as soon as possible afterwards.