APOD: Pan-STARRS Across the Sky (2019 Apr 05)

[APOD Robot]

Pan-STARRS Across the Sky

Explanation: This astronomical sky spanning view is a mosaic from the Pan-STARRS observatory. The images were recorded with its 1.8 meter telescope at the summit of Haleakala on planet Earth's island of Maui. In fact, Earth's north celestial pole is centered in this across-the-sky projection. A declination of -30 degrees, the southern horizon limit as seen from the Hawaiian Valley Isle, defines the circular outer edge. Crowded starfields and cosmic dust clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy stretch across the scene with the bright bulge of the galactic center at the bottom. Compiled over four years, the image data represent the second edition of data from Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System), currently the planet's largest digital sky survey. In 2017 Pan-STARRS was used to first recognize the interstellar voyage of 'Oumuamua, visitor to our Solar System.

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[bystander]

viewtopic.php?t=36651#p289358

[starsurfer]

I would love to see a survey like this in OIII.

[Donald Pelletier]

Maui is at a latitude of 20° or so. The limit declination is (20°-90°) = -70, not -30. Error in the text or is it the limit declination of the telescope?

[Ann]

I get lost here.

I can spot something that sure looks like the Andromeda Galaxy at center left. There are what looks like two "eyes" above it, and one these two eyes could be M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, and the other one just might be cluster NGC 752.

To the right of the M31 - M33(?) - NGC 752(?) triangle, there is something bright tucked right into the luminous band of the Milky Way. Would that bright thing be the Double Cluster?

Where are the Pleiades, though? Shouldn't they be visible?

There is something faint at about 10 o'clock. There is a long dark dust lane below it and to the right of it. Would the faint object be the Pleiades?

And what is that small but bright cluster at about 2 o'clock?

I would love an annotated version of this APOD!

Ann

[AleneStar]

I am confused by this explanation. How can the north celestial pole be centered in the image? The From the Island's perspective, the north celestial pole (near Polaris, and not at all in the vicinity of the Milky Way) would be fairly low on the horizon.

[BDanielMayfield]

Maui is at a latitude of 20° or so. The limit declination is (20°-90°) = -70, not -30. Error in the text or is it the limit declination of the telescope?

-30 deg would have to be the declination limit ether of the survey or of the part of the survey that they are displaying here.

I am confused by this explanation. How can the north celestial pole be centered in the image? The From the Island's perspective, the north celestial pole (near Polaris, and not at all in the vicinity of the Milky Way) would be fairly low on the horizon.

You're right that Polaris would always be low on their horizon, but this isn't a photograph, it is a map of data recorded year round (actually over four years), and then digitally plotted onto a flat plane. It shows far more than the 1/2 of the sky we can see at any one time.

Bruce

[neufer]

Antique Constellation star map circa 1900s by theStoryOfVintage

---

Maui is at a latitude of 20° or so. The limit declination is (20°-90°) = -70, not -30. Error in the text or is it the limit declination of the telescope?

-30 deg would have to be the declination limit ether of the survey or of the part of the survey that they are displaying here.

I am confused by this explanation. How can the north celestial pole be centered in the image? The From the Island's perspective, the north celestial pole (near Polaris, and not at all in the vicinity of the Milky Way) would be fairly low on the horizon.

You're right that Polaris would always be low on their horizon, but this isn't a photograph, it is a map of data recorded year round (actually over many years), and then digitally plotted onto a flat plane. It shows far more than the 1/2 of the sky we can see at any one time.

Note that the Milky Way passes through Cassiopeia and Cepheus near the north celestial pole.

[orin stepanek]

I get lost here.

I can spot something that sure looks like the Andromeda Galaxy at center left. There are what looks like two "eyes" above it, and one these two eyes could be M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, and the other one just might be cluster NGC 752.

To the right of the M31 - M33(?) - NGC 752(?) triangle, there is something bright tucked right into the luminous band of the Milky Way. Would that bright thing be the Double Cluster?

Where are the Pleiades, though? Shouldn't they be visible?

There is something faint at about 10 o'clock. There is a long dark dust lane below it and to the right of it. Would the faint object be the Pleiades?

And what is that small but bright cluster at about 2 o'clock?

I would love an annotated version of this APOD!

Ann

I think that is Andromeda also! I see what is the bulge also! Silly me; when I saw Pan-Starrs I thought Comet!

[Cousin Ricky]

It’s frustrating to me that I cannot identify any stars at all—not even Polaris, despite the hint that it is near the center of the image. I just see a homogeneous mass of dots.

[BDanielMayfield]

I get lost here.

As do I also, but that is due to the great compression of so much data onto such a small surface. Star brightnesses are also greatly compressed, so much so that not even the brightest constellations and asterisms are discernible.

But that's a small price to pay for what this represents.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, in conjunction with the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), is releasing the second edition of data from Pan-STARRS — the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System — the world's largest digital sky survey. This second release contains over 1.6 petabytes of data (a petabyte is 1015 bytes or one million gigabytes), making it the largest volume of astronomical information ever released. The amount of imaging data is equivalent to two billion selfies, or 30,000 times the total text content of Wikipedia. The catalog data is 15 times the volume of the Library of Congress.

The Pan-STARRS observatory consists of a 1.8-meter telescope equipped with a 1.4-billion-pixel digital camera, located at the summit of Haleakalā, on Maui. Conceived and developed by the IfA, it embarked on a digital survey of the sky in visible and near-infrared light in May 2010. Pan-STARRS was the first survey to observe the entire sky visible from Hawai'i multiple times in many colors of light. One of the survey's goals was to identify moving, transient, and variable objects, including asteroids that could potentially threaten the Earth. The survey took approximately four years to complete, scanning the sky 12 times in five filters. This second data release provides, for the first time, access to all of the individual exposures at each epoch of time. This will allow astronomers and public users of the archive to search the full survey for high-energy explosive events in the cosmos, discover moving objects in our own solar system, and explore the time domain of the universe.

Dr. Heather Flewelling, a researcher at the Institute for Astronomy in Hawai'i, and a key designer of the PS1 database, stated that “Pan-STARRS DR2 represents a vast quantity of astronomical data, with many great discoveries already unveiled. These discoveries just barely scratch the surface of what is possible, however, and the astronomy community will now be able to dig deep, mine the data, and find the astronomical treasures within that we have not even begun to imagine.”

“We put the universe in a box and everyone can take a peek,” said database engineer Conrad Holmberg.

The four years of data comprise 3 billion separate sources, including stars, galaxies, and various other objects. This research program was undertaken by the PS1 Science Consortium — a collaboration among 10 research institutions in four countries, with support from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Consortium observations for the sky survey were completed in April 2014. The initial Pan-STARRS public data release occurred in December 2016, but included only the combined data and not the individual exposures at each epoch of time.

“The Pan-STARRS1 Survey allows anyone access to millions of images and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars, galaxies, and moving objects,” said Dr Ken Chambers, Director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories. “While searching for Near Earth Objects, Pan-STARRS has made many discoveries from ‘Oumuamua passing through our 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. We hope people will discover all kinds of things we missed in this incredibly large and rich dataset.”

[Chris Peterson]

I'm not sure "mosaic" is the right word to describe this. A mosaic is typically an image made by stitching together other images. I think this is a digital reconstruction from image data, similar to the Blue Marble images of Earth.

[BDanielMayfield]

Since ' “The Pan-STARRS1 Survey allows anyone access to millions of images and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars, galaxies, and moving objects,” said Dr Ken Chambers, Director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories,' how can 'anyone' access this data? Is it possible to scroll about the universe viewing this data in depth in the kind of way we can use Google Earth?

Bruce

[alter-ego]

I get lost here.

I can spot something that sure looks like the Andromeda Galaxy at center left. There are what looks like two "eyes" above it, and one these two eyes could be M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, and the other one just might be cluster NGC 752.

To the right of the M31 - M33(?) - NGC 752(?) triangle, there is something bright tucked right into the luminous band of the Milky Way. Would that bright thing be the Double Cluster?

Where are the Pleiades, though? Shouldn't they be visible?

There is something faint at about 10 o'clock. There is a long dark dust lane below it and to the right of it. Would the faint object be the Pleiades?

And what is that small but bright cluster at about 2 o'clock?

I would love an annotated version of this APOD!

Ann

I think that is Andromeda also! I see what is the bulge also! Silly me; when I saw Pan-Starrs I thought Comet!

Here's my best shot at an annotated version:
 

[Ann]

I get lost here.

I can spot something that sure looks like the Andromeda Galaxy at center left. There are what looks like two "eyes" above it, and one these two eyes could be M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, and the other one just might be cluster NGC 752.

To the right of the M31 - M33(?) - NGC 752(?) triangle, there is something bright tucked right into the luminous band of the Milky Way. Would that bright thing be the Double Cluster?

Where are the Pleiades, though? Shouldn't they be visible?

There is something faint at about 10 o'clock. There is a long dark dust lane below it and to the right of it. Would the faint object be the Pleiades?

And what is that small but bright cluster at about 2 o'clock?

I would love an annotated version of this APOD!

Ann

I think that is Andromeda also! I see what is the bulge also! Silly me; when I saw Pan-Starrs I thought Comet!

Here's my best shot at an annotated version:
 
Pan-STARRS APOD Annotated.JPG

Thanks a million, alter-ego!

Okay, silly me, that means that pretty much all we see is located in the northern hemisphere? I did notice that the Magellanic Clouds were not visible.

Again, thanks a million!

Ann

[orin stepanek]

Yes; Alter Ego, Thanks!

[alter-ego]

Yes; Alter Ego, Thanks!

You both are welcome. Except for M31 and Milky Way dust lanes, the combination of perspective and lack of identifying bright stars tends to leave one feeling lost. Annotating objects (or object positions) does bring some satisfying closure to a tremendous data set presented as an APOD.

[Cousin Ricky]

Okay, silly me, that means that pretty much all we see is located in the northern hemisphere? I did notice that the Magellanic Clouds were not visible.

No, as the description says, the map goes to a declination of -30°. Quite a few of those objects are in the southern hemisphere, including M2, M4, M10, M12, M14, M41, M42, M43, M46, M47, and M48. But the LMC tops out at about -64°, so it doesn’t show on this map. The SMC is even further south.

My latitude is 2½° south of Haleakalā, and the LMC just barely skims my horizon, and is never observable through the horizon extinction.

[BDanielMayfield]

Just came across this from the wikipedia article on Pan-STARS:

The Pan-STARRS NEO survey searches all the sky north of declination −47.5.[2]

So they could have shown us even more of the sky, but with even greater distortion. (Like Greenland appearing larger than all of South America on some world maps.)