Google Joins Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project (Forwarded)

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
Tucson, Arizona

Science Contact Information:

J. Anthony Tyson, LSST Director
530-752-3830

Donald Sweeney, LSST Project Manager
520-661-9247

Media Contact Information:

Suzanne Jacoby, LSST Corporation
520-881-2626

January 5, 2007

RELEASE: LSSTC-05

Google Joins Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project

Google has joined a group of nineteen universities and national labs that
are building the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

Scheduled to begin operations in 2013, the 8.4-meter LSST will be able to
survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its
three-billion pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of Dark Matter and
Dark Energy, and opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move
rapidly: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids as
small as 100 meters, and distant Kuiper Belt Objects. LSST is a
public-private partnership.

LSST and Google share many of the same goals: organizing massive quantities
of data and making it useful. Over 30 thousand gigabytes (30TB) of images
will be generated every night during the decade-long LSST sky survey. The
massive amount of data from LSST must be managed efficiently and analyzed in
real time. Key areas in the Google-LSST collaboration will be: organizing
the massive ingestion of information, processing and analyzing the
continuous data streams in a 24/7 fault tolerant manner, enabling the new
discoveries coming out of the LSST to be made available to the public and
researchers in real time, and working with and managing large parallel data
systems. In addition to aiding professional scientists and amateur
astronomers, properly organized the LSST data will generate a new and
dynamic view of the night sky for the public. LSST data will be valuable to
curious minds of all ages, and will provide a powerful teaching tool.

In applying for membership, William Coughran, Google VP of Engineering,
said: "Google's mission is to take the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful. The data from LSST will be an important
part of the world's information, and by being involved in the project we
hope to make it easier for that data to become accessible and useful."

"The LSST will be the world's most powerful survey telescope, with vast data
management challenges. LSST engineers and scientists have been collaborating
with Google on a number of these exciting opportunities. Even though the
Universe is very old, exciting things happen every second. The LSST will be
able to find these events hundreds of times better than today's other big
telescopes. Google will help us organize and present the seemingly
overwhelming volumes of data collected by the LSST," said Donald Sweeney,
LSST Project Manager.

"Partnering with Google will significantly enhance our ability to convert
LSST data to knowledge," said University of California, Davis, Professor and
LSST Director J. Anthony Tyson. "LSST will change the way we observe the
universe by mapping the visible sky deeply, rapidly, and continuously. It
will open entirely new windows on our universe, yielding discoveries in a
variety of areas of astronomy and fundamental physics. Innovations in data
management will play a central role."

More information about the LSST including current images, graphics, and
animation can be found at
http://www.lsst.org

In 2003, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Research Corporation,
The University of Arizona, and the University of Washington formed the LSST
Corporation, a non-profit 501(c)3 Arizona corporation, with headquarters in
Tucson, AZ. Membership has expanded to include Brookhaven National
Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Google
Inc., Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Johns Hopkins University,
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology - Stanford
University, Las Cumbres Observatory Inc., Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, Princeton University, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, The
Pennsylvania State University, University of California at Davis, University
of California at Irvine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and
University of Pennsylvania.

The LSST research and development effort is funded in part by the National
Science Foundation under Scientific Program Order No. 9 (AST-0551161)
through Cooperative Agreement AST-0132798. Additional funding comes from
private donations, in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and
other LSSTC Institutional Members.

IMAGE CAPTION:
[http://www.lsst.org/News/images/LSST_Rendering_VK.jpg (3.42MB)]
Google Inc. has joined with nineteen other organizations to build the Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope, scheduled to see first light atop Cerro Pach in
Chile in 2013. Image Credit: Michael Mullen Design, LSST Corporation.