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The SkyMapper Telescope and The Southern Sky Survey

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Open access via publisher
Authors
Keller, S.
Schmidt, B.
Bessell, M.
Conroy, P.
Francis, P.
Granlund, A.
Kowald, E.
Oates, A.
Martin-Jones, T.
Preston, T.
Tisserand, P.
Vaccarella, A.
Waterson, Mark
Date
2007
Type
Journal Article

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Citation
Keller, S. C. and Schmidt, B. P. and Bessell, M. S. and Conroy, P. G. and Francis, P. and Granlund, A. and Kowald, E. and Oates, A. P. and Martin-Jones, T. and Preston, T. and Tisserand, P. and Vaccarella, A. and Waterson, M. F. 2007. The SkyMapper Telescope and The Southern Sky Survey. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. 24 (1): pp. 1-12.
Source Title
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
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School
Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy
Remarks

Published online: 4 May 2007

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Abstract

This paper presents the design and science goals for the SkyMapper telescope. SkyMapper is a 1.3-m 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 16 384 × 16 384 0.5-arcsec pixels. The primary scientific goal of the facility is to perform the Southern Sky Survey, a six-colour and multi-epoch (four-hour, one-day, one-week, one-month and one-year sampling) photometric survey of the southerly 2π sr to g ~23 mag. The survey will provide photometry to better than 3% global accuracy and astrometry to better than 50 milliarcsec. Data will be supplied to the community as part of the Virtual Observatory effort. The survey will take five years to complete.