Subject: LSST Astrometric Survey

From: dgm@nofs.navy.mil

Submitted: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 07:56:25 -0700

Message number: 7 (previous: 6, next: 8 up: Index)

Now that there is an "official" SWG, and now that Michael has distributed
an "official" list of the LSST Science Goals, it seems appropriate for me
to re-submit my suggestion that the LSST Astrometric Survey be included in
the "offical" list.  There is nothing in what follows that was not presented
in Tucson in Nov 2000.

In the course of the LSST survey, we can anticipate single observation
astrometric accuracies of 30-50 mas with respect to the system of J2000,
and 3-5mas in a differential sense.  This level of astrometric accuracy
combined with the weekly (+/-) revisits will enable the first parallax
limited survey that measures the parallax of every (in the LSST detection
sense) star in the sky.  This will lead to a new knowledge of stars in
the solar neighborhood (and beyond), and will finally remove the selection
effects that arise from using color, proper motion, or other surrogates
for parallax.  In addition, the proper motions will lead to a new understanding
of local Galactic structure.

My proposal to this august body is that astrometry be raised from the
"and also" category, and placed in the Science Goals list so that some
attention to astrometric accuracy (within the limits of budget and
schedule) can be included in the LSST design.  Obviously, I can prepare
a longer version of the justification if needed.  The purpose of this SPAM
is to suggest this as an item of discussion for the upcoming SWG meeting.

-Dave Monet is dgm@nofs.navy.mil

LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST    Mailing List Server   LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST
LSST
LSST  This is message 7 in the lsst-general archive, URL
LSST         http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/msg.7.html
LSST         http://www.astro.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/LSSTmailinglists.pl/show_subscription?list=lsst-general
LSST  The index is at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/INDEX.html
LSST  To join/leave the list, send mail to lsst-request@astro.princeton.edu
LSST  To post a message, mail it to lsst-general@astro.princeton.edu
LSST
LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST