SkyMapper, Automated optical telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, New South Wales, Australia.
SkyMapper is an automated optical telescope located at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, featuring a 1.35-meter primary mirror and a 0.69-meter secondary mirror in a modified Cassegrain system. The instrument uses a camera with 268 million pixels to capture wide sections of the sky with each observation.
SkyMapper was built by the Australian National University as successor to the Great Melbourne Telescope at Mount Stromlo, which burned in the 2003 Canberra bushfires. It was inaugurated in 2009 by Minister Kim Carr and New South Wales Governor Marie Bashir. The survey project is funded by the Australian Research Council and was a finalist in The Australian's 2011 Innovation Challenge.
This research facility contributes to international astronomy by providing digital survey data of the southern sky to scientists worldwide.
The telescope operates at 1163 meters elevation on a mountain plateau where sky conditions favor observation. Visitors should know that this is an active research instrument not open for regular public access, used only by trained professionals.
The instrument can detect objects one million times fainter than human vision and has already catalogued nearly one billion stars and galaxies in its digital sky survey. This capability makes it a vital source for discovering celestial objects that would remain completely invisible to the naked eye or older telescopes.
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