Jan 10, 2011 15:05 GMT  ·  By

Astronomers operating the powerful Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescope recently got the visit of scientists from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who calibrated their photo sensors for asteroid observations.

This particular observatory, which is located atop the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, is the proud owner of the largest digital camera in the world. The instrument boasts more than 1.4 gigapixels.

Since May 2010, the telescope has been looking for near-Earth objects (NEO) that could potentially pose a threat to our planet. Discovering such objects is very difficult because they are cold and dark, and therefore difficult to observe in visible light wavelengths.

The NIST visit was part of an effort to calibrate the observatory, so that astronomers working there could benefit from most of the instrument's observing power. In order to do that, they scanned the night sky for signs of Type 1A supernovae.

These are cosmic events that occur when white dwarf stars begin a nuclear fusion reaction. Fractions of a second later, they exploder violently, breaking the star apart, and producing a remnant that shines steadily, and always with the same intensity.

This is used by astronomers as a means of telling distance in space. Such supernovae are called standard candles, and are used as stable reference points in the Universe.

If the Universe were to be still, then these standard candles would always remain at the same distance from each other. But the theory goes that the Cosmos is expanding, which means that the candles need to be going away from each other.

Studying type 1A supernova events is therefore one of the most important things in astronomy, because it could confirm and infirm a large number of scientific theories related to the appearance of the Universe.

“Pan-STARRS will scan the same areas of the sky repeatedly over many months,” NIST scientist John Woodward explains in a statement.

“It was designed to look for near-Earth objects like asteroids, and it also pulls double duty as a supernova hunter,” the expert adds.

“But for both jobs, observers need to be sure they can usefully compare what they see from one image to the next,” he goes on to say, quoted by Space.

“We specialize in measurement, and they needed to calibrate the telescope in a way that has never been done before,” Woodward concludes.