Ever since astronomers discovered in 1998 that our universe is expanding faster as time goes by the idea has captivated researchers across the world. The idea is that this acceleration in the rate it¡¯s expanding because of ¡°dark energy¡±, the mysterious gravitational force spread throughout our universe.
A concept render of what the LSST facility will eventually look like
Now, scientists from dozens of institutions across 23 countries have come together to work on a new telescope they believe can shed light on dark matter. Called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), it¡¯s a gigantic digital camera to be mounted on Earth, which will capture images from galaxies millions of light years away.
¡°All the existing telescopes with cameras were built before the discovery of dark energy,¡± Paul O¡¯Connor, a senior scientist from Brookhaven National Laboratory told Atlas Obscura. ¡°We expect the LSST to map the entire sky and find out where all that dark matter has been hiding.¡± O¡¯Connor has been working on the project for over ten years and he believes it could completely change how we understand the workings of the universe.
The LSST's 3.5 metre wide mirror cells, part of its camera assembly
The LSST would serve to capture images of galaxies much further away than our current technology allows. The camera¡¯s field of view when pointed at the sky would be just ten square degrees, but it would still be able to spot around a million distant galaxies in that area. It'll also be outfitted with a 3,200 megapixel sensor being developed by O'Connor at Brookhaven, able to capture light from stars 100 million times dimmer than those visible to the naked eye.
It is a large-aperture, wide-field optical camera that is capable of viewing light from the near ultraviolet to near infrared wavelengths. It's 3 metre long, 1.65 metre high, weighs 2800 kg, and has a pixel count of 3200 megapixel -- several times better, more precise than even the best smartphone cameras out there.
When the LSST begins operations in 2020, in the mountains of Chile, it will be tasked with scanning regions of the sky over and over for the next 10 years. It¡¯s expected to capture each patch of sky a thousand times, over the course of 3,000 nights. ¡°We¡¯re really going to be making a movie of the universe,¡± O¡¯Connor said.
The camera assembly of the LSST compared with a human
With that data, astronomers hope to better understand dark energy by looking at how it interacts with objects in the universe. Studying how these far-flung galaxies are shooting away from us could bring new discoveries in the field of astrophysics that we¡¯ve never even thought?