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World's Largest Digital Camera Project Passes Critical Milestone

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-some-funding dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with a link about the progress of one of the coolest astronomy projects around. "A 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera designed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is now one step closer to reality. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera, which will capture the widest, fastest and deepest view of the night sky ever observed, has received 'Critical Decision 1' approval by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to move into the next stage of the project. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the entire visible sky every week, creating an unprecedented public archive of data – about 6 million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000 images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera every night, but of much higher quality and scientific value. Its deep and frequent cosmic vistas will help answer critical questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter and aid studies of near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, the structure of our galaxy and many other areas of astronomy and fundamental physics."

19 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Sad for NASA by treeves · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that DOE is doing this and not NASA.

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    1. Re:Sad for NASA by Jeng · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is politically beneficial it for politicians to cut NASA's funding, but other agencies want these projects done so they do it because they actually have the funding to do it.

      So yea, it is sad for NASA, but it's not NASA's fault.

      --
      Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  2. In LOC, please by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate when articles can't use standard units. Are petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes not really usable yet?

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    1. Re:In LOC, please by RenderSeven · · Score: 5, Funny

      Most people think that 'petabytes' is somehow related to child pornography, 'exabytes' is a skin disease, and 'zettabytes' is a video game character.

    2. Re:In LOC, please by HapSlappy_2222 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Zettabyte goes north.
      Zettabyte goes north.
      Zettabyte sees entrance to Cave of Ominous Petabytes.
      Zettabyte enters Cave of Ominous Petabytes.
      Zettabyte contracts Exabytes! Also, his sword broke!

    3. Re:In LOC, please by HapSlappy_2222 · · Score: 2

      I often create canvas prints of family photos. Mainstream 3.2 gigapixel pics means I'll be photoshopping another 1.1 gigapixels of zits, fat, and moles OUT, another 1.1 gigapixels of hair, tanned skin, and white teeth IN, and just plain giving up on the remaining gigapixel (meh, it's probably just the dog or grandma anyway).

      God it's hard to make people prettier than they are in real life; exponentially so when they're high-rez people. Maybe I'll ONLY make canvas prints out of LSST space photos. Uh.... 3. Profit?

  3. Spotting Solar system object by DadLeopard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would think that it would also help track down just about everything in the Solar system, when using successive pictures of the same portion of the sky in a "Blinker" box or whatever they use in place of that now. Dark matter is all fine and dandy, but the location and trajectory of Asteroids and comets are of a different degree of importance!

    1. Re:Spotting Solar system object by Jeng · · Score: 5, Funny

      The problem is that even with this camera, if what you are looking at is not illuminated then it will not be visible (think asteroid in shadow of moon).

      So basically the worlds largest digital camera needs the worlds largest camera flash. I would suggest using a low yield nuclear warhead, but there would be a few issues with that.

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    2. Re:Spotting Solar system object by formfeed · · Score: 2

      So basically the worlds largest digital camera needs the worlds largest camera flash. I would suggest using a low yield nuclear warhead, but there would be a few issues with that.

      Make that two nuclear warheads to avoid red eye.

  4. Precursor Google Galaxy: Aliens watch ur rooftops by youn · · Score: 2

    any unauthorized spaceships, doomsday stars and other prohibited devices should not be left in orbit without at least cloaking :p

    --
    Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
  5. Opening the JPEG takes Eternity by retroworks · · Score: 2

    And don't even ask about the amount of hard drive space to Photoshop the cosmos.

    --
    Gently reply
    1. Re:Opening the JPEG takes Eternity by mj1856 · · Score: 2

      "To the cloud!"

    2. Re:Opening the JPEG takes Eternity by almitydave · · Score: 2

      Has anyone worked out what the pixels-per-arc-second resolution would be?

      OK, if my math is correct, assuming a single image encompasses the entire sky, this is 167 square arc-seconds per pixel, or about 13 linear arc-seconds per pixel. This would mean the moon would be 645 pixels across, Venus would be (currently) about 3 pixels across, and Jupiter at its closest would be about 4.

      --
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    3. Re:Opening the JPEG takes Eternity by MetricT · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm with the group at Vanderbilt developing the storage filesystem for LSST, and it has some interesting challenges.

      1. It requires redundancy at the server, rack, and site level. 2. Both data and metadata have to scale both in volume and in throughput (GB/sec or transactions/sec) separately of each other.
      3. It has to work on the WAN level (GPFS & Lustre don't scale beyond the LAN yet).
      4. It should optionally have HSM functionality so you can offload stuff to tape.
      5. The data must be maintained in perpetuity so researchers years/decades from now can use it.
      6. It must be portable across operating systems so Windows/Mac/Linux/etc users can all access the data.
      7. All of this should be completely transparent to the user.
      8. And it has to be done on the cheap (scientists definition of cheap, not CIO's definition).

      Yeah, it can be (and is) being done. We're already using our filesystem to store 2+PB of data for the CERN CMS-HI experiment on commodity hardware. But I can tell you it is a substantially harder problem than you think.

  6. All those pixels... by Reasonable+Facsimile · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... just waiting to be dumbed-down with an instagram filter.

  7. Good news by GodGell · · Score: 2

    This is great news. Remember the scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan uses that 3D star map, projecting from a crystal ball?
    With this, if the weekly image is public, we could actually create such real-time maps.

    --
    [SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS ... I mean, FUCK BETA] Eat. Survive. Reproduce. GOTO 10
    1. Re:Good news by MisterSquid · · Score: 2

      I see. You actually meant a scene from Episode II, not Episode IV.

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      blog
  8. Re:WOW by Savantissimo · · Score: 3, Informative

    More to be said - here's the scientific FAQ: http://www.lsst.org/lsst/faq-science
    Choice bits:

    ...That combination is unique: wide field of view (10 square degrees), short exposures (pairs of 15-second exposures), and sensitive camera (24th magnitude single images, 27th magnitude stacked). ...
    The etendue of LSST is 320 square meters square degrees. A primary mirror diameter of 8.4 m (effective aperture 6.7 m due to obscuration) is the minimum diameter that simultaneously satisfies the depth (24.5 mag depth per single visit and 27.5 mag for coadded depth) and cadence (revisit time of 3-4 days, with 30 seconds per visit) constraints....
    The nominal high-SNR sample defined by i25 for point sources) will include four billion galaxies (55 per square arcminute) with the mean photometric redshift accuracy of 1-2% (relative error for 1+z), and with only 10% of the sample with errors larger than 4%. The median redshift for this sample will be z=1.2, with the third quartile at z=2. ...

    Q: Will the full resolution, full depth image data be available to download?

    A: Yes. There will be a range of data products and download portals. The LSST data system is being designed to enable as wide a range of science as possible. Standard data products, including calibrated images and catalogs of detected objects and their attributes, will be provided both for individual exposures and the deep incremental data coaddition. For the "static" sky, there will be yearly database releases listing many attributes for billions of objects. This database will grow in size to about 30 PB and about 20 billion objects.
    As in the SDSS, we expect a power law of user interactions with the data. At one end of this distribution are simple lookup queries or color jpeg cutout downloads. At the other end are huge statistical calculations over the entire database, and image operation scripts on billions of objects. The data management system is budgeted to handle most but not all of that distribution. Institutions joining LSST early, and members of the LSST Science Collaborations, will have the customary advantage of deep familiarity with the LSST system and survey.

    --
    "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
  9. Actually Arthur C. Clarke (as usual) proposed this by wisebabo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In one of his short stories, (I believe) after a near miss by an earth grazing asteroid (sliced through the upper atmosphere over a major city), a very large (gigaton) bomb is detonated in earth's orbit in a position diametrically opposed to the earth. The resulting "flash" resulted in a radar pulse (remember that was Clarke's early training in WWII) that was used to illuminate all the objects in the solar system. This was recorded and catalogued.

    Decades later, an extra-terrestrial signal is recorded from another star system. After a quick calculation, it is apparent that the aliens, upon detecting the flash of this giga-bomb, quickly responded with a reply aimed at our solar system.