SkyMapper and the Southern Sky Survey

• Main Authors: Keller, S. C, Schmidt, B. P, Bessell, M. S, Conroy, P. G, Francis, P, Granlund, A, Kowald, E, Oates, A. P, Martin-Jones, T, Preston, T, Tisserand, P, Vaccarella, A, Waterson, M. F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 20.02.2007
• Subjects: Physics - Astrophysics of Galaxies; Physics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics; Physics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics; Physics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; Physics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Physics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0702511

Publ.Astron.Soc.Austral.24:1-12,2007 This paper presents the design and science goals for the SkyMapper telescope. SkyMapper is a 1.3m telescope featuring a 5.7 square degree field-of-view Cassegrain imager commissioned for the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. It is located at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia and will see first light in late 2007. The imager possesses 16kx16k 0.5 arcsec pixels. The primary scientific goal of the facility is to perform the Southern Sky Survey, a six colour and multi-epoch (4 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year sampling) photometric survey of the southerly 2pi steradians to g~23 mag. The survey will provide photometry to better than 3% global accuracy and astrometry to better than 50 mas. Data will be supplied to the community as part of the Virtual Observatory effort. The survey will take five years to complete.