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Pan-STARRS is designed to be an advance to the next level in
NEO survey work. This new system will have 3-16 times the collecting
power of the current NEO survey telescopes and a massive array
of state-of-the-art CCD detectors in the focal plane. They will
enable the Pan-STARRS survey to reach about 5 magnitudes (a factor
of 100) fainter objects than observed by current NEO
surveys. Further, Pan-STARRS' large field of view (7 deg2 per exposure)
is larger than that of any of the current NEO survey programs.
This will allow us to observe the available sky faster and more
frequently than any of the current programs. Finally, Pan-STARRS
will have higher spatial resolution than the existing survey systems,
allowing us to work in the parts of the sky where the ecliptic
plane overlaps with the Milky Way, often too crowded with stars
for the current surveys to observe effectively.
The Pan-STARRS system consists of more than just the telescope
and CCD cameras. Backing up the observing equipment will be a powerful
computing environment that will process the observations, calibrate
the astrometric and photometric (position and brightness) properties
of individual observations, and detect the "moving" objects
such as asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
The system will also track all objects already known (or discovered
by itself), so that on future nights when an object is reobserved
it can be rapidly identified and if necessary, its orbit updated
to include the new data. There are currently about 100,000 known
moving objects in our solar system that are tracked by professional
astronomers. With Pan-STARRS, we estimate that we will catalog
up to 10 million main-belt asteroids and tens of thousands of NEOs
and TNOs.
By reaching objects 100 times fainter than those currently observed
in the NEO surveys, Pan-STARRS should quickly help finish off the
Congressional mandate to find and determine orbits for the 1-km
(and larger) threatening NEOs. Further, we will be able to push
the detection limit for a complete (99%) sample down to objects
as small as 300 meters in diameter. Such objects, while not capable
of wiping out life on Earth, would cause considerable local and/or
regional damage should one collide with our planet.
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