Wednesday, December 17, 2014
In the remote mountains of northern Chile, miles away from nearest city or streetlight, construction of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has begun. Coupling an extremely wide field of view with a 3200 megapixel digital camera, the LSST will be able to capture the entire night sky every few days, generating a wealth of information that will be used to detect signatures of dark matter and dark energy, map the Solar System and the Milky Way and observe fleeting stellar phenomena like supernovae. In order to do this, the LSST relies on a complex system of lenses and reflecting mirrors to collect and focus incoming light; the largest of the mirrors is a mammoth 8.4 meters in diameter. To get the clearest view of the most obscure celestial objects, the telescope’s mirrors and lenses need to be free of terrestrial contaminants. When the researchers working on the LSST asked us to recommend a filter