Research Research Projects SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey Approximately 75% of SkyMapper's observing time will be initially dedicated to the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky. label Research theme Research themes Galactic archaeology Stellar and planetary astronomy Structure and evolution of the Cosmos traffic Project status Project status Current Content navigation toc About Image Approximately 75% of SkyMapper's observing time will be initially dedicated to the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky. Features of the Southern Sky Survey include: Multi-colour, multi-epoch of all 20000 sq. degrees south of equator (ugriz filters & v filter like the DDO 38 filter) Data supplied to the community via All-Sky Virtual Observatory Star and Galaxy photometry (3% absolute calibration) Astrometry (better than 50 mas ) Digital images available for download, photometrically calibrated, with accurate World Coordinate Systems, both single images and combined images. The table below summarises the expected survey depth (2.5" seeing) for a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 in AB mags: u v g r i z 1 EPOCH 19.5 19.5 21.0 21.0 20.0 19.0 SATURATION 10.0 10.5 13.0 13.0 11.0 10.5 EXP. TIME (s) 100 100 100 100 100 100 FINAL DEPTH 20.5 20.5 21.7 21.7 20.7 19.7 In addition, a 5-Second Survey will be undertaken in photometric conditions for calibration of stars from 9th to 16th magnitude in all bands. This will provide the calibration of the survey and will allow the survey to be tied to the Hipparchos and Tycho catalogs (and other photometric standard systems that are established in the southern hemisphere) to ensure uniformity across the sky. Southern Sky Survey science goals include: Census of bright end of TNO and Centaur population, especially off the ecliptic plane Galactic census – metallicity, gravity, temperature, variability of many millions of stars Mapping the structure of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds Searching for new dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way Discovery of up to 500 SNe over 5 years Phot-Z samples of z0.5 galaxies for studies of Large Scale Structure (e.g. Int-Sachs wolf, Paczynski-Alcock) QSO discovery, variability, evolution Bright z>6 Quasars Digital reference for radio, X-Ray, GRB instruments An astrometric and photometric basis for the Virtual Observatory Non-survey science identified to be undertaken with the telescope includes: Planet transit studies Microlensing studies Supernovae Widefield surveys in non-survey filters Survey progress Main survey Total fields First colour sequence complete Grey sky pairs complete Bright sky pairs complete Full sequence complete 4055 1624 (40.0 %) 1604 (39.6 %) 3916 (96.6 %) 507 (12.5 %) Short survey Total fields Fields started Fields complete 4055 3732 (92.0 %) 3687 (90.9 %) Updated at: 10/01/2018 21:00 UTC