The first specimen of the endangered cactus species, Sandillón (Eriocyce aurata), propagated in a University of La Serena laboratory as part of LSST’s environmental mitigation program, has been relocated to the greenhouse on Cerro Pachón. The relocation is a significant milestone in LSST’s effort to mitigate the effects of site excavation on the endangered species of Chile (LSST E-News, October 2011 Volume 4 Number 3).

The New York Times

Menlo Park, Calif. — A 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera designed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is now one step closer to reality. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera, which will capture the widest, fastest and deepest view of the night sky ever observed, has received “Critical Decision 1” approval by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to move into the next stage of the project.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the entire visible sky every week, creating an unprecedented public archive of data – about 6 million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000 images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera every night, but of much higher quality and scientific value. Its deep and frequent cosmic vistas will help answer critical questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter and aid studies of near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, the structure of our galaxy and many other areas of astronomy and fundamental physics...