Telescope For Warning Hazardous Comets and Asteroids
Silicon chips developed at MIT s Lincoln Laboratory are the heart of a new telescope that will soon increase by more than five times the ability of scientists to detect asteroids and comets that might some day, too close to Earth, posing a threat for our planet. The telescope prototype installed on Mount Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii, has the largest digital camera and advanced in the world, using silicon chips Lincoln Laboratory. This telescope is the first of four to be located together in a dome. The system, called Pan-Starrs is being developed at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.
This is a really huge, says astronomer John Tonry of the University of Hawaii, who leads the team that developed the new camera is 1.4 gigap xeles. We get an image of 38,000 by 38,000 pixels in size, about 200 times larger than that obtained in a high-end digital camera available commercially.
The Pan-Starrs system, cameras which cover an area of sky six times the diameter of the full moon, and stars can detect 10 million times less obvious that visible to the naked eye, is also unique in its ability to find objects variable brightness or movement. The Lincoln Lab CCD technology is a key element of the telescope camera. In the mid-90s, researchers Barry Burke and Dick Savoye s Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with Tonry, who then worked at MIT, developed the OTCCD, a CCD device that can move from place to cancel their pixel motion effects random images. Many digital cameras use commercially available systems to compensate for camera shake and ensure that pictures come out less blurry, but the OTCCD done electronically at the pixel level and much faster.
The main mission of the Pan-Starrs is to detect asteroids and comets that come close to Earth and can be dangerous for the planet. When the system is fully operational, the entire sky visible from Hawaii will be photographed at least once a week, and all images will be placed on powerful computers at the Center for High Performance Computing Maui. Scientists will analyze the images from the center to seek changes that could reveal a previously unknown asteroid. They also combine data from multiple images to calculate the orbits of asteroids, looking for signs that any could be on a collision course with Earth.
