Scientists complete the largest digital survey of the visible universe

Astronomers have just released the largest digital survey of the visible universe – the results of an international project which features data from more than three billion different stars, galaxies, and other space objects collected over the past four years, according to a press release.

The survey was compiled as part of the international Pan-STARRS initiative, an effort that used a 1.8-meter telescope operated by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and based at the summit of a volcano in Maui. The survey, which used visible and near infrared light, was the first to observe the entire visible sky in multiple colors of light, the researchers said.

Using the observatory, the participating scientists collected a total of two petabytes worth of data while repeatedly imaging roughly three-fourths of the sky – data equivalent to a billion selfies or 100 times the content of Wikipedia. The telescope was used to scan the sky 60 times in all, or 12 times with each of five different filters, with the goal of finding moving objects such as asteroids that could potentially threaten the Earth.

“The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys allow anyone to access millions of images and use the database and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars and galaxies,” Pan-STARRS observatories director Dr. Ken Chambers from the University of Hawaii said in a statement.

Data expands census of known objects to 300 light years

Launched in May 2010, Pan-STARRS (officially known as the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) was designed to rapidly observe the visible sky repeatedly, looking for moving, variable or transient objects. The project involved 10 research institutions from around the world and was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

“Pan-STARRS has made discoveries from Near Earth Objects and Kuiper Belt Objects in the Solar System to lonely planets between the stars; it has mapped the dust in three dimensions in our galaxy and found new streams of stars; and it has found new kinds of exploding stars and distant quasars in the early universe,” said Dr. Chambers.

“With this release we anticipate that scientists – as well as students and even casual users – around the world will make many new discoveries about the universe from the wealth of data collected by Pan-STARRS,” he noted. NSF astronomical sciences division director Nigel Sharp added that it was “great” to see the data released “to the general astronomical community.”

The newly released data, the “Static Sky,” provides an average value for the position, color and brightness of the objects captured in the sky at various points in time. Additional data based on individual images will be released in 2017, the researchers said. Once it is released, the data will all be accessible online at the Pan-STARRS1 data archive home page.

Thanks to Pan-STARRS, “researchers are able to measure distances, motions and special characteristics such as the multiplicity fraction of all nearby stars, brown dwarfs, and of stellar remnants like, for example white dwarfs,” Thomas Henning of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy’s Planet and Star Formation Department (PSF), told Engadget. “This will expand the census of almost all objects in the solar neighborhood to distances of about 300 light-years.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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