The image below, which comes from a pilot project called the Deep Lens Survey (DLS), gives a taste of what the sky will look like with LSST. This image covers the area of the full moon, or half a degree. The DLS images are deep, showing roughly ten times as many galaxies per unit area than the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), but the LSST data will actually go deeper still. LSST will also have better resolution than the SDSS as it has been designed from the ground up to minimize blurring, unlike many of today's telescopes. But most impressively, the LSST images will cover 50,000 times the area of this image, and in 6 different optical bands. In addition, LSST will also reveal changes in the sky by repeatedly covering this area multiple times per month, over 10 years.
Click on the image to pan through a high resolution copy.
Click here to download a PowerPoint presentation showing the improvement in resolution and depth from images taken from the DSS: digitized photographic plates, to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and finally to the Deep Lens Survey. The LSST will be an even greater improvement being twice as deep and having twice the resolution of the DLS.
