The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS1; obs. code: F51 and Pan-STARRS2 obs. code: F52) located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, US, consists of astronomical cameras, telescopes and a computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving or variable objects on a continual basis, and also producing accurate astrometry and photometry of already-detected objects. In January 2019 the second Pan-STARRS data release was announced. At 1.6 petabytes, it is the largest volume of astronomical data ever released.
The Pan-STARRS Project is a collaboration between the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Maui High Performance Computing Center and Science Applications International Corporation. Telescope construction was funded by the U.S. Air Force.
By detecting differences from previous observations of the same areas of the sky, Pan-STARRS is discovering many new asteroids, comets, variable stars, supernovae and other celestial objects. Its primary mission is now to detect Near-Earth Objects that threaten impact events and it is expected to create a database of all objects visible from Hawaii (three-quarters of the entire sky) down to apparent magnitude 24. Construction of Pan-STARRS was funded in large part by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Additional funding to complete Pan-STARRS2 came from the NASA Near Earth Object Observation Program, which also supplies most of the funding to operate the telescopes. The Pan-STARRS NEO survey searches all the sky north of declination −47.5.
The first Pan-STARRS telescope (PS1) is located at the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii, and went online on 6 December 2008 under the administration of the University of Hawaiʻi. PS1 began full-time science observations on 13 May 2010 and the PS1 Science Mission ran until March 2014. Operations were funded by the PS1 Science Consortium, PS1SC, a consortium including the Max Planck Society in Germany, National Central University in Taiwan, Edinburgh, Durham and Queen's Belfast Universities in the UK, and Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities in the United States and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.
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