The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large-aperture wide-field, ground-based telescope that will survey half the sky every few nights in six optical bands ranging from 320 to 1050 nanometers.

SLAC leads the development of the LSST camera, which is currently in the final stages of R&D. When complete, the camera will produce a data set that will offer insight into a wide range of pressing questions about the attributes of dark energy and dark matter, the formation of the Milky Way, the properties of small bodies in the solar system, the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids and the possible existence of undiscovered explosive phenomena.

The 8.4-meter LSST will be constructed on the El Penon peak of Cerro Pachon in northern Chile. Its camera, which is made up of three refractive lenses and a 9.6-square degree field-of-view, will be the largest digital camera ever constructed. Once operational, the LSST will take a pair of 15-second exposures of each field thoughout the entire night. Simulations demonstrate that the LSST can deliver a uniform and deep 18,000-square-degree survey and will produce over 5.2 million exposures in ten years. This “movie,” which is sensitive to redshifts of up to 3, will open an entirely new window on the universe: the time domain. LSST will produce on average 15 terabytes of data per night, yielding an uncompressed data set of 200 petabytes. Dedicated facilities will process the image data in near real time.

SLAC's participation in LSST is part of the research program of the SLAC–Stanford Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Additional information about LSST can be found on the project homepage.