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arXiv · astro-ph/0701507

The Impact of LSST on Asymptotic Giant Branch Star Research

Abstract

(Abridged) The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is currently by far the most ambitious proposed ground-based optical survey. The main science themes that drive the LSST system design are Dark Energy and Matter, the Solar System Inventory, Transient Optical Sky and the Milky Way Mapping. The LSST system, with its 8.4m telescope and 3,200 Megapixel camera, will be sited at Cerro Pachon in northern Chile, with the first light scheduled for 2013. In a continuous observing campaign, LSST will cover the entire available sky every three nights in two photometric bands to a depth of V=25 per visit (two 15 second exposures), with exquisitely accurate astrometry and photometry. Over the proposed survey lifetime of 10 years, each sky location would be observed about 1000 times, with the total exposure time of 8 hours distributed over six broad photometric bandpasses (ugrizY). This campaign will open a movie-like window on objects that change brightness, or move, on timescales ranging from 10 seconds to 10 years. The survey will have a data rate of about 30 TB/night, and will collect over 60 PB of data over its lifetime, resulting in an incredibly rich and extensive public archive that will be a treasure trove for breakthroughs in many areas of astronomy. I describe how this archive will impact the AGB star research and speculate how the system could be further optimized by utilizing narrow-band TiO and CN filters.

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BibTeXRIS

Z. Ivezic. 2007-01-17. The Impact of LSST on Asymptotic Giant Branch Star Research. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701507

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