Research briefs

Skymapper’s to capture the southern skiespring Observatory. SkyMapper is a custom-built telescope that over five years will undertake the Southern Sky Survey – the first ever systematic digital map of the entire southern skies. In the process, it will produce 400 terabytes of data – equivalent to 100,000 DVDs – that will be freely available to astronomers via the internet. “Astronomers will use this data to discover everything from dwarf planets like Pluto in our solar system to the first black holes in the universe, whose light has taken 13 billion years to reach us,” said Professor Brian Schmidt, the project’s lead scientist. He said the telescope’s camera 268 megapixel camera is capable of snapping pictures covering an area of sky 25 times as large as the full moon, with a sensitivity 5 million times that of the human eye, every two minutes.