Current Status of Pan-STARRS?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Does anyone know how the Pan-STARRS project is shaping up please? I was following it with a lot of interest and was hoping it would discover a bonanza of solar-system objects, including some large ones beyond the Kuiper belt. I know the first telescope - PS1 - has been operating for some time now, but is it living up to expectations? The original plan was for an array of four scopes, but their status page just says "The current schedule estimate for PS2 First Light is early 2013." I mentioned it in another thread, but one poster said the PS1 project is about to finish. Unfortunately they did not respond when I asked them what was happening with it.

[ronin]

http://events.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/meeting/20131014/talk/2013101610_Talk_Wen-PingChen.pdf

Page 23 appears to be saying PS2 in up and running and should start full operation in 2014.

No news of the other originally intended 2 telescopes.

Sure something recently mentioned Panstarrs and it only mentioned 2, did show the 2 observatories next to each other.

Would assume that the intended 4 has been reduced to 2.

[ronin]

PS2 Milestone Schedule
• Telescope FAT in Belgium (passed) Dec 2012
• The on-site delivery of the telescope structure Mar 2013
• The on-site delivery of the 16-OTA TC3 camera Mar 2013
• Completion of the optics & instrument integration with the telescope Apr 2013
• The Site Acceptance Testing (SAT) of the telescope May 2013
• The start of post-SAT telescope commissioning, i.e., testing that does Jun 2013
not involve direct participation by the telescope vendor
• The on-site delivery and integration of GPC2 Jul 2013
• The return of GPC2 Oahu for final tuning early Oct 2013
– Includes focal plane metrology to match the physical detector
surface to the actual optical focal surface determined from the
preliminary collimation and alignment
– Possible replacement of some devices, if necessary
• Subsequent return of GPC2 to the summit mid Nov 2013
• Final collimation and alignment Nov-Dec 2013
• The successful simultaneous operation of PS1+PS2 using OTIS2 Dec 2013

• Beginning of science operations Jan 2014

From P32 http://astro.dur.ac.uk/ps1sc_workshop/talks/Kaiser_Tuesday_AM.pdf

[dph1nm]

I mentioned it in another thread, but one poster said the PS1 project is about to finish. Unfortunately they did not respond when I asked them what was happening with it.

Oh sorry, that was me - managed to miss your question.  There are only to be two scopes, not 4 (or indeed 16 as some original idea had it). PS1 is just about to finish its 3 year mission, which maps the whole sky above -30 dec about 12 times in each of five filters. You can see what is it capable of here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121012.html.  PS1 has been run by an international consortium of universities doing everthing from cosmology to asteroids. It is this consortium which is about to come to an end. The data will be made public by the STScI in a year or so.

Interestingly, PS1 happened to take a pre-discovery image of the M82 supernova, but it wasn't picked up as it was too bright for the software!

PS2 has had first light recently, but I believe at the moment it does not have the final camera installed, so it's field of view is limited. At the moment, the future of both PS1 and PS2 appears to be in the search for Near Earth Asteroids and nothing else (there is no new consortium ...).

NigelM

p.s. you can find some stats on NEO discoveries at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks for the updates. Look forward to seeing what comes out of the data, mining it effectively must be a mammoth task.

[dph1nm]

mining it effectively must be a mammoth task.

The word nightmare (and a few other unrepeatable ones!) comes to mind ...

NigelM

p.s. there is a NEO discoveries.