LSST E-News |
Kaboom! Life’s a Blast on Cerro Pachón
First Blast was a spectacular event as documented in these images. The white line in the upper image shows how much material must ultimately be removed to provide the platform for LSST. Image credit: M. Warner, F. Delgado, CTIO
Site leveling activities have begun on the El Peñón summit of Cerro Pachón in preparation for the LSST. “First Blast”, detonated on El Peñón on the morning of March 8th, broke up ~320 cubic meters of material; 13,000 cubic meters must ultimately be removed to provide the platform for LSST at the summit and another 6,000 cubic meters for calibration hill and road work. Approximately 55 blasts of similar size are necessary to remove all the remaining material.
A short film about First Blast was compiled by Emily Acosta and premiered at the April Board Meeting in La Serena. It can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded through links on the gallery. Webcams have been installed in two locations on the summit, one on El Peñón itself and another from the Gemini South telescope building. Both webcams are updated every minute and available from the LSST gallery. This site leveling activity is made possible by private funding to the LSST Corporation and will be completed in July, 2011.
LSST is a public-private partnership. Funding for design and development activity comes from the National Science Foundation, private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and other LSSTC Institutional Members:
Adler Planetarium; Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL); California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; George Mason University; Google, Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Institut de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3); Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) – Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); National Optical Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; Texas A & M University; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California at Davis; University of California at Irvine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington; Vanderbilt University
LSST E-News Team:
- Suzanne Jacoby (Editor-in-Chief)
- Anna Spitz (Writer at Large)
- Mark Newhouse (Design & Production: Web)
- Emily Acosta (Design & Production: PDF/Print)
- Sidney Wolff (Editorial Consultant)
- Additional contributors as noted
LSST E-News is a free email publication of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project. It is for informational purposes only, and the information is subject to change without notice.
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