Talk:Pan-STARRS

Error?
"A 64 × 64 array of orthogonal transfer CCDs (OTCCDs) is used in the camera, with each component CCD being roughly 600 × 600 pixels"

...which would make a 23 megapixel camera, rather then 1.4 gigapixels.

According to http://space.newscientist.com/channel/space-tech/dn12588-worlds-biggest-digital-camera-to-join-asteroid-search.html?feedId=space-tech_rss20 (both the text and the referenced images), there are actually 60 CCDs (rather than 64). That would make each CCD approx 4,830 x 4,830 pixels (approx 23,328,900 pixels). Strangely, 600 x 600 x 64 is 23,040,000, so it looks like the poster has divided 1.4GPixel by 60, then again by 64, then taken the square root to arrive at the 600x600 figure.HexAmp (talk) 00:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * 600 x 600 = 360,000 pixels per OTCCD. 64 x 64 = 4096 OTCCDs. 360,000 (pixels) x 4096 (OTCCDs) = 1,474,560,000 pixels. I don't see a problem. --216.111.160.86 (talk) 14:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Schedule?
So, is it known when the project will be finished? &mdash; Northgrove 02:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Not so far as I can tell. PS1 became operational in 2007, and has a limiting magnitude of 22.7 (not 24). In 2007, PS4 was scheduled for 2010. PS2 and PS3 will be later than that. Mollwollfumble (talk) 06:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I found the below PS1 informal status update in sci.astro which is more current than the official web page. I am not sure if or how we can incoporate this into the Wikipedia article. Bealevideo (talk) 21:48, 9 February 2010 (UTC) Newsgroups: sci.astro From: Dan Birchall Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:08:57 -0600 Subject: Re: Pan-STARRS

I pinged a couple people. My friend said he was doing some fiddling with a probe or something. Management told me that over the winter, they scheduled a few weeks of downtime and fixed the structural issues they were having (secondary support or something?) modifying things and fabricating new bits where needed.

The results they're now getting are almost to the point where they need them, but they still have some thermal issues to rectify due to recycling an old un-vented dome from LURE or MAGNUM or whatever it was; they might add some vents to the dome to help with thermal equalization.

They're now gearing up for a 1-month run of datataking, with the real-time data-processing pipeline and everything running. They'll analyze what they get to determine whether it's good enough to start full operations. People sound hopeful that they'll be fully operational this summer - and yes, that's about 18 months late. [...] Dan Birchall, Night Operation Assistant, Subaru Telescope/NAOJ.

Bigger than Pluto?
"Pan-STARRS will also likely detect a number of Kuiper belt objects the size of Pluto or larger." I doubt it. Larger than Charon, possibly, but unlikely to be any new ones larger than Pluto in the Kuiper belt detectable by Pan-STARRS. The discovery rate of KBOs has dropped off greatly in the past 5 years. Mollwollfumble (talk) 06:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * PanStarrs gets its money from the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force has the dearly beloved but financially troubled F-35 Lightning project.  It is not unheard of that government agencies find ways to renege on financial commitments.


 * An unnamed source at Kirtland AFB indicated that Near Earth Object concerns were no longer part of the U.S. Air Force mission.PanSTARRS: Astronomy & Asteroid Assessment Defense Industry Daily.


 * What this boils down to is that the rosy predictions of PanStarrs backers might suffer from financial necessity. In any case, piddling cost over-runs at PanStarrs will be frowned on while the Air Force scrambles for as many billions as it can manage to stuff into the F-35 program.  It is time to ask not what will PanStarrs accomplish, but what has PanStarrs accomplished.  The claim about finding objects the size of Pluto needs to be dropped.  It can be replaced when there is a source that is not shy.  Fartherred (talk) 19:43, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Link to Mount Lemmon Survey
The reference note which user provided at Pan-STARRS supporting mentioning the Mount Lemmon Survey is unfortunately an assertion, not a citation to a source. The statement appears to be likely true, so I won't revert it again, but I searched for "Mount Lemmon" on the cited page which does provide real data and could not locate it. Perhaps I'm missing something. Since the Mount Lemmon Survey seems to be part of the Catalina Sky Survey, I'm not sure why it is so important to link to the more specific project without a citation to back it up, but it seems like a good citation should be found first before the change substituting "Mount Lemmon" for "Catalina Sky" is made. --Robert.Allen (talk) 23:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Mount Lemmon Survey is oftenly considered as a separate survey. Here is a link to discovery statistics where Mt. Lemmon Survey (code G96), Siding Spring Survey (E12) and Catalina Survey (703) itself are presented as separate surveys. You can see that Mt. Lemmon Survey is most prolific NEA discoverer (see # NEA column). Code C51 is WISE satellite, its mission will be finished in several months. — Fjörgynn (talk) 06:13, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

References[11] link.
The references-11 ("Sky Coverage Plots". IAU Minor Planet Center.) link gives a Router error page.

Current used url: http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/~cgi/SkyCoverage.html (linking to a cgi(script) page seems not a general good idea.)

Alternative url: http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/SkyCoverage.html (This is the parent page for the SkyCoverage result page. But the default filled form settings might not fit the References. (although a error page is not that useful either of course.)

- Not changing the link myself, as there might be more to the link I'm aware of. - This section don't needs to be maintained, on my account, after being resolved (any which way). --MvGulik (talk) 20:02, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Involved in NASA Scout system
Provides data for Scout (NASA program) - Rod57 (talk) 15:57, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Minor Planets
I've removed the long list of minor planet discoveries that was recently added. Long lists like that aren't appropriate to an encyclopaedia entry. If someone who's more knowledgeable about this subject than I am wants to write a short section describing, in prose, the most important minor planet discoveries, that would be fine. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:22, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Verify source for P/2012 B1
The Minor Planet Center reference for P/2012 B1 does not contain either the discovery date or that Pan-STARRS discovered it. Maybe I am missing something. I tried to obtain an appropriate reference from MPC but that is extremely difficult, e.g. looking up the spelling of "ptomaine" in a printed dictionary. The second reference is a little shaky. (Wikipedia instructed me to add a detailed explanation to the article's "talk" page.) -- User-duck (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Article C/2014 G3
For now, I added C/2014 G3 to "See also" section. Anyone is welcome to move into "Selected discoveries" table. JoeNMLC (talk) 02:43, 4 August 2021 (UTC)