Re: LSST: The Death of Amateur Astronomy?
- From: advicegiven <newvariables@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:37:28 -0700 (PDT)
On Mar 29, 11:45 am, James <wimpyVO2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope comes on board, I don't see
how amateurs will be able to discover anything new in the sky. The
LSST will always be there first. You can forget comet hunting,
asteroid hunting, or finding galaxy supernovae.
LSST will image ten square degrees of sky to 24th magnitude every 16
seconds, completing the entire visible sky in three nights. Image
difference comparisons will be almost instantaneous. If anything moves
or changes in the sky, LSST will find it and report it.
"With its ability to go faint fast, LSST will find virtually all one-
kilometer NEOs in less than a year. In a decade of operation, it will
find 90 percent of all NEOs down to 140 meters in diameter... a new
source brightening over a period of a few days with a particular color
signature will be identified as one of the several hundred thousand
supernovae LSST is expected to discover each year."
http://www.lsst.org/About/Tour/software.shtml
LSST isn't due for years yet.
LSST will saturate at 15th or 16th mag, most other surveys only go
down to 12th or 13th mag reasonably, there's a gap just about where
amateurs' equipment normally resides, 13th to 16th mag.
Amateurs haven't been providing asteroid or neo stuff for some time
now, unless they work down to 19th mag or so, so that's nothing new.
However, despite LINEAR finding most of those, some amateurs still
find some comets the big surveys miss.
Supernovae have been mostly found by professional surveys for a while
now, too. Some amateurs may still find one or two, but who cares,
they just find them and then look for another, rarely following the
lightcurve. There is no point to such things.
You've only seen the down to mag 24 bit and panicked.
Plenty to do between mag -1.5 and 16. Little imaging going on even
with the brighter surveys, and naked eye stuff is mostly just that,
naked eye, or possibly PEP.
Again, LSST won't come on stream for years. PanSTARRS is only just
starting its test run too.
And there's nothing to stop you looking through a telescope and
enjoying the view, if light pollution permits.
No change at all.
More worries from pretentious little teets who rent roboscopes and
think they know it all when they are actually thickoes. They will
ruin new entrants to the hobby with their pseudoscience and arrogance.
Meanwhile other amateur astronomers don't just go around finding
things, some very few now do work and study, and do better jobs on
some results than the automated robots the professionals use, which
can make some really, really silly mistakes.
.
- References:
- LSST: The Death of Amateur Astronomy?
- From: James
- LSST: The Death of Amateur Astronomy?
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