Monday, November 24, 2008

Asteroid Tracking From Hawaii

One of four new telescopes to discover and track asteroids will be coming online in Hawaii next month. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) has the worlds largest digital cameras, measured at 1400 Mega pixels and will be able to take images of large portions of the sky.

The mission of the Pan-STARRS system will be to look for Near Earth Orbiting asteroids and comets (NEOs). These NEOS have potential orbits that may intersect with the Earth. Many of them are still floating around in space and it will be the job of this telescope to find them.

Computer processing will then analyze the images for motion by any asteroids in its field of vision. The cameras on this system will be able to counteract the negative effects that our earth's atmosphere has astro-photography. Gases in the Earth's atmosphere distort images in ordinary telescopes, but these new telescopes will be fitted with chips that help negate these effects.

It is expected that these four telescopes, once they all come online will be able to deliver images far an above your standard earth based telescope. The images will be near Hubble quality.

2 comments:

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JAMcLynne said...

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