The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a new type of telescope designed to survey the sky quickly and deeply in multiple colors. LSST will discover tens of thousands of asteroids, study hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies, and find new transient objects that explode or otherwise change brightness on timescales from hours to years.
The LSST observatory will be located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, and construction is currently planned to begin in 2019. When completed, LSST will be the largest digital camera ever built, with a 9.6-gigapixel field of view that is nearly 30 times the size of the full moon. This wide field of view will allow LSST to image the entire visible sky every few nights, allowing it to detect moving or changing objects much more efficiently than current surveys.
LSST is being designed as a public facility from the start: data from LSST will be made available immediately to astronomers around the world for further study. In addition, members of the public will be able to access images and data products from LSST through an interactive “data lab” interface.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope has been described as a “time machine” due to its ability to discover and study astronomical objects that change over time scales ranging from seconds to billions of years. By mapping the locations and motions of stars and galaxies over cosmic time, LSST will enable scientists to track how matter has clustered together under gravity throughout cosmic history – providing clues about dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of our Universe but remain largely mysterious today.